Network_Computing_Devices
Network Computing Devices
Defunct Electronics Company
Network Computing Devices (NCD) was a company founded in 1987 to produce a new class of products now known as a thin client. It was founded in Mountain View, CA, and when it closed it was headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon.
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The corporate founders were Mike Harrigan, Doug Klein, Dave Cornelius, Ed Basart, Martin Eberhard, and Kevin Martin.
At that time these devices were known as network terminals or X Terminals. Judith Estrin and William Carrico joined the company about 6 months after its founding as its new CEO and executive vice president, and led the company through its IPO in 1992. The products were some of the earliest examples of a thin client and providing remote access to data in something other than ASCII as was common with traditional terminals of the time.
The X Protocol provided a way to show high-resolution images of data and graphics over a network connection. NCD supported a range of network protocols including TCP/IP, Token Ring, DECnet and others. NCD also developed network-transparent audio system called the Network Audio System (nas) to play, record and manipulate audio over a network.[1]