This is a brief history of InterMedia Graphic Systems Ltd 1984 - 2000, and how it influenced eMag Solutions and S2 Data. Also how CnW Recovery was developed and eventually sold to Disk Drill.
This is largely a personal story of my self, Michael Cotgrove, and how I developed products. It will include key stages of InterMedia. I will include peoples names, but apart from directors, this will be just first names
Pre InterMedia
My career started with a degree in Electronics at Southampton University. My first job was was a process control company where I was designing interface boards for control systems based on DEC PDP-8
My second job was with an industrial weighing company in South Wales. Initially designing hardware for PDP-8, but then embracing modern micro-processors such as Intel 8048 single chip, and Intel 8085. At this stage I started programming these systems in both assembler and Intel PLM. The 8048 was a multi-tasdking system with 6K of ROM and 256bytes of memory. EVERY byte of memory was critical.
The Welsh company was actally part of a much larger USA one, and so in my 5 years I had 5 trips to the USA. One was for 6 weeks which I moaned was rather a long time. I was suddenly offered a free ticket for my 'new girl friend' which she took with delight, and has shared my life for the past 45 years - at one point becoming my wife.
In 1983, the company was being re-organised considerably and I was made redundant, with 4 months notice and quite generous terms. At this point I had been working from home in Lewes, East Sussex (40 years before t was common). I decided to consider working for my self. I invested most of my redundancy money in a PC, the spec as below. By comparison is a PC I purchased in 2023
1983
2023
Processor
8088 + 8085 8/16 bit
Intel Core i7 13700KF, 64 bit
Speed
5MHz
4.6GHz
Memory
192KB
32GB
Disks
2 x 5.25" floppy , 1 8" floppy
2 x 2TB SSD
1 x 8" floppy
1 x 12TB, 1 x 8TB
Storage capacity
2MB
24TB
Display
80 x 25 monochrome
3 x 1920x1200 colour
Printer
Dot matrix
Laser and integrated scanner
Price
£5,000
£2,500
Price US $
$12,500
$3,000
Operating system
CP/M or MS-DOS V1.0
Windows 11 - 64
Programming
C
C/C++
As you can see, performance and value for money have changed dramatically. The price in 1983 was equivalent to a new small car. A new small car is now closer to £20,000.
The PC I bought was a Zenith Z100 which would run CP/M and MS-DOS. It did contain a routine that allowed MS-DOS to read it's CP/M disks, but not the other was around. I wrote a simple, DOS program to copy files to CP/M disks, and even sold some copies via the agent selliung Zenith computers. My next relevant development was a program to read the 8" disks from the previous Intel Development system. This had a format ISIS, totally incompatible with MS-DOS or CP/M
Early in 1983 I was working closely with a small local company, Orca systems, supporting PCs - still a new market in 1983. One day, the owner of the business, Brian Howard was standing in the road outside his office because there was a power cut. He started to talk to a neighbouring business. The neighbouring buisness was a typesetter who complained that he could not read his customer's CP/M disks into the Alphatype typesetting systems. Brian, knowing what I had done between CP/M and MS-DOS managed to get a sample Alphatype 8" disk. A few days later I had a routine to provide the customer with a solution to his problem. This was my big start on non native restoration, or data conversion. I am still working in thge same field 40 years later.
The next stage went vary quickly. Alphatype user put us in touch with two of his contacts who very interested in my development. Within a few months we had paired up with Alan Janes and Sean O'Reily. Alan ran a type setting company and ex policeman Sean was into sales for typesetting products.
I started to develop a general purpose program to read disks of various formats. This was called 'DTP' and stood for Disk Transfer Program. Desktop Publishing was just around the corner with the same acronym.
By the end of 1983 InterMedia had been setup with 4 directors, Michael Cotgrove, Brian Howard, Alan Janes and Sean O'Reily. Main offices in Lewes.
First years
1984 was a year of rapid growth and technical developments. We started to take on staff. First was a junior programmer Natasha, followed by Fran. Fran remained with the 'group' until he retired a few years ago.
We managed to sell our first products to type setters at about £11,000 including hardware. This was for what was a very small program, but we gave extremely high levels of support. If a disk format was required, this ws typically added within a few weeks.
We had two main competitors, both USA based (AlterText and Shaffstell) and selling at a similar price.
In the early 1980s the word processor market was booming, but the opportunity for us was that very word processor had it's own hardware and disk format. Very early on we developed the slogan, 'InterMedia makes computers compatible'. Slowly word processors became PCs, either running CP/M, CP/M86 or DOS. This opened up the market to handle all the word processing formats on PCs. Most popular were Word Star, MultiMate, Word Perfect, Samna and many more. InterMedia developed tools so these data could be processed and converted to useful data, often including attributes such as bold, centering etc.
Big Growth
The mid 1980s saw rapid growth for InterMedia. We had several UK agents, and overseas dealers in the following countries. France, German, Spain, Italy, Holland, Norway, Sweeden Finland, USA and Australia . We also opened an office in Singapore to support the Far East. Lewes office at one time had about 40 staff, including about 6 programmers. Several of the European agents did a lot of work with banks. Others were involved with typsetting and these two areas were the bulk of our business. A growing area was probably defence and government departments. MOD, Inland Revenue, and even GCHQ as well as some classified customers.
Customer support
A very important part of the business was customer support. This worked several ways. Most important was to assist customers with using the software, but also the liase with them over new features and new formats. We would add extra floppy disk formats every week, and increasing support for word processing packages. Every few months there would be a complete system update that was sent out on several floppy disks by post. In exchange we charged support fees for unlimited support and format updates.
The support team, lead for many years by Barbara had about 4 staff talking to customers, and often training them on how to get the most out of the system. There were a series of report forms that were filled in, in multiple colours. I think pink for customer support, green for a programmer and yellow for the archive. Programmers would be nagged at by support people for a solution, but overall it worked well and the customer had a product that was evoving all of the time. As a company, we all benefitted from any exposure any where to a new format, or a new issue we could solve.
Legal case against a competitor
In the late 1980s we discovered a competitor of ours had developed a similar product, but copied the user interface almostv exactly. So much so, a colleague suggested they had also copied my spelling mistakes (and I make many of those). Anyway, we took them to court in Norway and won. As part of the deal, they had to change the user interface entirely. I do remember one small bonus of a visit to Oslo in midsummer was to swim in the sea at 9pm, and 'almost' getting run over by an ice cream boat. Another visit was with thick snow.
The following is an article I came across, dated 1989 from TechMonitor 30
At last… a court decision on look and feel, screams the come on on the fly-leaf of a bit of flackery, but what is contained in the pages underneath is a big let-down, because it turns out that the ruling was handed down in Norway, and the writ of Norwegian jurisprudence does not run much beyond – well, Norway’s borders: even so, InterMedia Graphic Systems Ltd of Lewes, Sussex is delighted to have won out over Aladdin Software A/S, successfully accusing it of having imitated InterMedia’s user interface and winning damages and costs.
Dealer Networks
We had two sets of dealers, UK and Overseas. Many had started as companies involved with type setting, but then this broadened out to many other areas, in particular banking and government departments and services.
UK dealers include Quorum Data in Gloucester, Brian Hayward, Ann Malony in Manchester, John Hybert in Maidenhead and a few others. If anyone can update this list I would appreciate it.
Overseas became fairly comprehensive
France, Exalog Germany, Isys Italy Netherland - Jan Jonlark Norway Sweden Finland Belgium Spain Italy USA Denmark Farum Data and Nico de Jong about 1993
We had dealer meetings in Lewes about 3 times a year, typically on a Sunday and Monday morning so everyone could make use of cheaper flights if you stayed over a Saturday night. These were an extremely good chance to have lots of feed back, listen to new ideas and also hear about problems. We tried to fit in a good meal for all on the Sunday evening. There were meetings also in Konstanz, Paris and Copenhagen. The network was like a large family, and generally a very happy one. Some photos are included in the gallery