This company is practically not famous for anything. Well, except for two things: firstly, its founder was Stephan Wozniak (Woz), also known as one of the co-founders Apple and as the creator of the famous Apple I and Apple II computers; Secondly CL9 was the first company to introduce a universal remote control (RC).
By the beginning of the 80s of the last century, remote controls had become the most common occurrence. The number of household appliances and electronics grew literally before our eyes, and consequently the number of remote controls also increased. Then Wozniak came up with the idea to create a universal remote control.
By that time he had already lost interest in Apple. The company turned into a way to make money, which was of little interest to a talented inventor. For his new idea, Wozniak founded a new company. At first he wanted to call it "Cloud 9", but then the co-founder of the company, one Joe Ennis (Joe Ennis), discovered that the name was already taken and they decided to stop at CL9.
Development progressed quite slowly. But as a result, in the fall of 1987, CORE UC-100 - the first ever programmable universal remote control. Unlike his own kind, he was a learner - he could be connected to a computer and set up in his own way. The built-in clock can also be attributed to unusual innovations - the remote control could execute the given commands at the required time. The remote control is based on the MOS 6502 processor.
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| CORE packaging |
Externally CORE did not differ in grace - a T-shaped white plastic box with a set of square and rectangular keys and even an LCD display. In total, up to 256 different commands could be programmed. The device was powered by AAA batteries. The device came with 4 floppy disks with all the necessary programs, a cable for connecting to a computer and a plump user manual.
And everything would be fine, that's just for the average user CORE turned out to be overly complex. It is difficult to imagine a typical layman on long winter evenings painstakingly sorting out obscure codes. The truth is, those who eventually figured it out were delighted. But there were too few of them. As a result, the project turned out to be unprofitable. The company had to shut down in 1988.
However, the work begun by Wozniak was not in vain - ideas CL9 the company took advantage Celadon. She based CORE, renaming it in 1991 to PIC-100. In addition to changing the name, the type of memory used was also replaced - now the remote control did not need to be reprogrammed every time after replacing the batteries. The affairs of this company were more successful - it exists to this day, releasing a wide variety of remote controls.
As for CL9, then few people remember her now. But her story is a good reminder that next to every Stefan Wozniak, stuffed with brilliant ideas, there should be a Steve Jobs, capable of creating brilliant companies based on them.
