Mohawk Data Sciences Corporation
Mohawk Data Sciences Corporation (MDS) was a 1964-launched company, started by former Univac engineers; by 1985 they were struggling to sell-off part of their company. History. The company was founded in Herkimer, NY by George Cogar, Lauren King, and Ted Robinson, former Univac employees. Their success in selling their first product, a Key-to-Tape Data Entry device that allowed doing away with Keypunch devices, brought them enough cash to also grow via acquisition. Among their acquisitions was Atron Corporation, developer of a minicomputer, the Atron 501 and 502. From the know-how acquired  and absorbed, Mohawk expanded into the areas of controlling line printers and also Remote Job Entry (RJE). This was the basis of their MDS 2400 RJE product, which supported 2780 and HASP. Financial difficulties a decade-and-a-half after the company opened led to the company's restructuring, renaming and eventual takeover. By that time, headquarters had been in Parsippany, NJ, with manufacturing in Herkimer, NY. Qantel Corporation. Mohawk acquired Qantel Corporation in 1980, later called "its strongest asset". Having sold around 10,000 systems worldwide, in the sports world it was known as the supplier for the computer hardware  and software for "12 of the 28 teams in the National Football League". Mohawk renamed itself Qantel in 1988, and in 1992 the remains of the latter, after bankruptcy, was acquired by Decision Data Computer Corporation. MDS Series 21. The MDS Series 21 (21/20, 21/40, 21/50) was configured as a CRT (which Mohawk called an "Operator Station") and a system unit (called a "Controller Console"). Up to four floppy disk drives could be housed in the latter. MOBOL. Mohawk's MOBOL - "Mohawk Business Oriented Language" - was described as "looked nothing like COBOL". The language's source code was compiled, rather  than being run interpretively. After a MOBOL program was compiled, a utility named "MOBOLIST" was used to display applicable messages (if any) for errors detected during compilation. MOBOL Syntax. The syntax codice_1 would output codice_2 to the screen at the beginning of the fifth line.