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Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

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Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#91

Post by le-mark »

benjedwards wrote: post #21

If you enjoyed this, back in 2015 I wrote a feature about Lore Harp McGovern and her business partners for Fast Company that goes into the creation of Vector Graphic in detail: https://www.fastcompany.com/3047428/how-two-bored-1970s-hous...

That was great and really piqued my interest. I remember reading Byte magazine (late 70s and early 80s) and the pages and pages of adverts for machines similar to the Vector; peripherals, compilers, and softwarein the same work satation category.

I’d love to read more about these products and their history. It was all very opaque. Even back then.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#92

Post by nashashmi »

flkiwi wrote: post #79
nashashmi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play. The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their me…

What?

Nothing

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#93

Post by [deleted] »

worik wrote: post #88
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Every tech company on the planet is tripping over themselves to hire/promote more minorities That is because of the problems than have been mounting in tech because people only hired people that looked like them. I do not understand what the problem is with DEI. (I am not in the USA, perhaps I am missing out). Making sure that no one is left behind, because they were over looked, seems like a good thing to me.

[deleted]

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#94

Post by IncreasePosts »

toolz wrote: post #57

I do believe there are unique challenges to being a woman in tech, but the odds seem in favor of women doing well both back in the 70's and today with todays stats having roughly 20% of CS grads being female while some 23% of SWEs are female. That suggests there are more women in software jobs than women who have been pursing that career academically. What stats do you see that suggest the odds are against women in t…

You need to look at dropout rate...what if women are 50% of freshmen CS majors and only 20% of graduates?

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#95

Post by hackerlight »

worik wrote: post #88
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Every tech company on the planet is tripping over themselves to hire/promote more minorities That is because of the problems than have been mounting in tech because people only hired people that looked like them. I do not understand what the problem is with DEI. (I am not in the USA, perhaps I am missing out). Making sure that no one is left behind, because they were over looked, seems like a good thing to me.

That's a real problem. People want to hire people that are just like them. Same school, same degree, same personality, same age, same political affiliation. I have seen the bias for the same race and gender, and not just white on white but with all races selecting their own, although that's on the down low.

I don't know what the current MO of DEI programs is, but I hope they're expansive by also targeting ageism and other present day discriminations.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#96

Post by cgh »

ThomPete wrote: post #56
laurex wrote: post #49

It’s not just that she overcame odds as a woman in the tech business that amazes, but that she was so clearly someone who cared about people, and chose to risk her business and reputation more than once to stay true to her values. That’s perhaps even more rare in this industry than being a successful female CEO.

there are no odds as a woman in the tech business. The tech industry is on of the most inclusive industries because it measures talent and value creation not features no one can do anything about

Not in the 1970s, which was when these events took place.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#97

Post by cgh »

nashashmi wrote: post #73
nashashmi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play. The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their me…

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play. The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their me…

Consider spending less time online.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#98

Post by userbinator »

worik wrote: post #88
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Every tech company on the planet is tripping over themselves to hire/promote more minorities That is because of the problems than have been mounting in tech because people only hired people that looked like them. I do not understand what the problem is with DEI. (I am not in the USA, perhaps I am missing out). Making sure that no one is left behind, because they were over looked, seems like a good thing to me.

When you start hiring people because of who they are, and not what they can do, it won't be long before that shows in the results you get. DEI has effectively replaced competence with identity politics.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#99

Post by tdeck »

In case anyone wondered, here you can see the manual for one of their machines' video cards (I am not sure where it fits in their range).

http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Manuals/Vector%20Gra...

Sadly both the display technology and the graphics memory are raster. I was hoping it would be something like the Vectrex or the Imlac.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#100

Post by kragen »

article says

> With her friend Carole Ely, she grew their company, Vector Graphic, into a major manufacturer of microcomputers

wikipedia says

> Vector Graphic sales peaked in 1982, by which time the company was publicly traded, at $36 million. It faltered soon after...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Graphic

taking a microcomputer company from nothing to a near-billion-dollar market cap on the public markets is nothing to sneeze at. on the other hand, tens of thousands of microcomputers per year doesn't qualify as 'a major manufacturer of microcomputers'. commodore sold three hundred thousand c64s in 01982. apple broke a billion dollars in sales that year. lore harp's company had almost 4% of that. you could reasonably describe mits, imsai, commodore, apple, atari, and tandy/radio shack as 'major manufacturers of microcomputers' in that time period, but not vector. they were small fry, like heath/zenith or cromemco

this unforgivable level of puffery suggests that much of the article may be false (as valley_guy_12 points out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39972703, this puffery is something it has in common with the company's name, even if it doesn't quite rise to the level of 'intergalactic digital research')

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