Lesson plan

Interdata

Interdata, Inc., was a computer company, founded in 1966 by a former Electronic Associates engineer, Daniel Sinnott, and was based in Oceanport, New Jersey. The company produced a line of 16- and 32-bit minicomputers that were loosely based on the IBM 360 instruction set architecture but at a cheaper price. In 1974, it produced one of the first 32-bit minicomputers, the Interdata 7/32. The company then used the parallel processing approach, which uses more than one computer processor simultaneously to perform work on a problem. This helped in making real-time computing a reality. Some real-time applications Interdata computers were used for included: Core Protection Calculator, used in some later Combustion Engineering designed nuclear power plants; lottery systems manufactured by GTech; the NexRad weather radar system. Many companies used them for internal high speed laboratory data capture, such as United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford, Connecticut wind tunnel, General Electric R&D in Schenectady, New York, and Perkin-Elmer in Connecticut (which later acquired Interdata). The 16-bit computers had several operating systems, such as the Basic Operating System (BOSS), Disk Operating System (DOS), Real Time Operating System (RTOS), and OS/16. The 32-bit computers had OS/32. The assembly language could generate series independent object code.…

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Article summary

Interdata, Inc., was a computer company, founded in 1966 by a former Electronic Associates engineer, Daniel Sinnott, and was based in Oceanport, New Jersey. The company produced a line of 16- and 32-bit minicomputers that were loosely based on the IBM 360 instruction set architecture but at a cheaper price. In 1974, it produced one of the first 32-bit minicomputers, the Interdata 7/32. The company then used the parallel processing approach, which uses more than one computer processor simultaneously to perform work on a problem. This helped in making real-time computing a reality. Some real-time applications Interdata computers were used for included: Core Protection Calculator, used in some later Combustion Engineering designed nuclear power plants; lottery systems manufactured by GTech; the NexRad weather radar system. Many companies used them for internal high speed laboratory data capture, such as United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford, Connecticut wind tunnel, General Electric R&D in Schenectady, New York, and Perkin-Elmer in Connecticut (which later acquired Interdata). The 16-bit computers had several operating systems, such as the Basic Operating System (BOSS), Disk Operating System (DOS), Real Time Operating System (RTOS), and OS/16. The 32-bit computers had OS/32. The assembly language could generate series independent object code.…

Key claims

  1. date of foundation: 1966 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the date of foundation is "1966". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1371104768

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.