[PLUG-TALK] Sears doomed

Dick Steffens dick at dicksteffens.com
Fri Jun 1 20:03:20 UTC 2018


On 06/01/2018 12:45 PM, Paul Heinlein wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Jun 2018, Rich Shepard wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 1 Jun 2018, Aaron Burt wrote:
>>
>>>  Sears was built on mail-order, and prospered on the spread and
>>>  decentralization of America.
>>
>> And their catelogs supplied outhouses in every rural area of fly-over 
>> country. Softer than corncobs.
>
> While I have nostalgic memories of training myself in the ways of 
> consumerism poring over the Sears catalog in the months leading up to 
> Christmas, I haven't purchased anything of significance in a Sears 
> store for years, probably decades.
>
> When I lived in Denver, I drove down streets full of Sears kit homes, 
> most of which were built in the 1910s and 20s. Any individual instance 
> was only as good as the person who assembled it (often the owner), but 
> at their best those houses provided quality entry-level housing for 
> communities that couldn't rely on local resources for home building.

Another example of what happens when you don't keep up with the times.

I was working for Prime Computer when microprocessors were becoming more 
available. A number of the engineers started experimenting with them, 
and I think some of them created a boot loader to replace the front 
panel. The Research department tried to get upper management interested 
in developing a serious product around a microchip, but couldn't get 
anywhere with them. So they went off and created Apollo Computer, which 
did use a Motorola 68000 chip (I think) to create their workstations. I 
left Framingham for Chelmsford a couple of years after Apollo got 
started and stayed with them a few years.

Prime, on the other hand, kept trying to build minicomputers, shifted 
into CAD, and then folded.

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens





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