Mr. Peter Harris

While he attended the University of Wisconsin, he describes his educational background and his early work as using computers at United Aircraft. He stated in an interview that while in his senior year, he met Mr. Fred Gruenberger, " who had a lot of ‘junkie' computer equipment. It was a real beginning punch card business, a Card Program Calculator and I asked him if he would teach me. And he said, ‘I won't teach you, but there's the computer. If you want to figure out how to use it, there are some manuals on the desk over there. Read the manuals and figure it out, but I'm not going to spend any time with you.' So I read the manuals and first learned how to wire a reproducer. Then I fooled around with the little computer, the CPC, and, sure enough, I could program it. After a few months, Gruenberger wanted some work done. Up until that time, I was just an outcast, just there begging time from him. Then he said, ‘Ah, I'll pay you a little bit if you do this.' So he gave me a problem and I solved it. I loved every minute of it and did it well." He started a service bureau company to convert the Connecticut Motor Vehicle Department addressograph plates to punch cards and then sold this business to C-E-I-R. He started a new service bureau company in San Francisco and created the ADPAC application development system which he first sold as a product. Later, he used ADPAC for his programming contract services which could generate operating programs or could be converted into COBOL programs. He built a product which would take existing COBOL programs and produce structured system charts and supporting documentation for program maintenance. This led to substantial Y2K work in the late 1990s. He described a new product which converts the old US UPC codes to the new international standard UPC codes. ADPAC is a leading software provider to corporations worldwide and its market share continues to expand. Boasting 40% of the top ten Fortune 500 companies as customers, ADPAC experienced the biggest growth in the history of the company after the introduction of its Y2K impact analysis software, which was sold under the TransCentury umbrella. In 1997, ADPAC's annual revenue increased 150% and earnings increased 80%. In 1964, ADPAC released its first product, an advanced software programming language -- the ADPAC Compiler -- that remains at the core of ADPAC products today. ADPAC's longest continuous licensing agreement is with Pacific Corinthian Life, which purchased the ADPAC Compiler in 1966 and continues to use it today. In 1967, ADPAC was featured in an article on the front page of Computerworld's debut issue. Two years later, it ran The Wall Street Journal's first full-page software ad, featuring the ADPAC Compiler language.