Wikipedia
Cyphernetics was a commercial timesharing company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As was the case with a number of commercial timesharing operators in the 1970s, Cyphernetics utilized the DECsystem 10 computer systems from Digital Equipment Corporation. The company also had a sales offices in most major US cities and many international locations, providing communications and technical support for clients.
Cyphernetics developed many products that were well ahead of their time, and whose concepts are contained in many of the most important PC applications, even today. Cyphernetics had an email system (called UTI:MEMO) in the early 1970s, as well as word processing (Cyphertext), spreadsheets (Cyphertab), project management, and time series data storage and analysis (TSAM). Despite comparatively weak CPU's, very limited memory and storage, and slow communications networks of the time, most modern PC applications were functional on the timesharing network at 300 to 1200 baud while running on a processor (that was much less powerful than a desktop PC is today) shared by 50+ simultaneous users.
Cyphernetics was purchased by Automatic Data Processing (ADP: www.adp.com) in 1975 and renamed ADP Network Services. The business did very well until the introduction of the PC, and declined after that.
Category:Time-sharing companies Category:Defunct computer companies of the United States Category:Automatic Data Processing