:For anyone coming after us, at first I thought possibly the first source we discussed above had the wrong year. If you look at the other sources available on the web you find the actual printed date of the magazine articles show 1985, vs. the hard written date/year of the first source we both looked at. However I did manage to find one printed source, Electronic design, Volume 33, Issues 18-22. Although the issue was from 1985, the article on the Owl says "The first of these was the Xebec Owl, a unit that bowed in last summer [1984]." 
 :* http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl;=en&rlz;=1G1GGLQ_ENUS350&=&q;=Dr.+Dobb%27s+Journal%2C+December+1985&aq;=f&aqi;=&aql;=&oq;=#q=xebec+owl&hl;=en&safe;=off&rlz;=1G1GGLQ_ENUS350&prmdo;=1&tbm;=bks&ei;=dsQQTvLTCInfiAKPlaH1Ag&start;=10&sa;=N&bav;=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp;=d636e0cc151b7d8d&biw;=1671&bih;=916