Mohawk Data Sciences Corporation (MDS) was an early computer hardware company, started by former Univac engineers in 1964;^[1] by 1985 they were struggling to sell off part of their company.^[2]

The company was founded in Herkimer, New York, by George Cogar, Lauren King, and Ted Robinson, former Univac employees.^{[citation needed]}

Their success in selling their first product, a Key-to-Tape Data Entry device that allowed doing away with Keypunch devices, brought them enough cash to also grow via acquisition.

Among their acquisitions was Atron Corporation, developer of a minicomputer, the Atron 501 and 502. From the know-how acquired and absorbed, Mohawk expanded into the areas of controlling line printers and also Remote Job Entry (RJE). This was the basis of their MDS 2400 RJE product,^[3] which supported 2780^[4] and HASP.

Another major acquisition was Anelex Corporation of Boston, at the time the second-largest manufacturer of printers behind IBM and an early entrant in the hard disk drive market. Mohawk finalized their acquisition of Anelex in October 1967.^[5][6]

Financial difficulties a decade-and-a-half^[1] after the company opened led to the company's restructuring, renaming and eventual takeover. By that time, headquarters had been in Parsippany, New Jersey, with manufacturing in Herkimer.^[2]

The MDS Series 21 (21/20, 21/40, 21/50) was configured as a CRT (which Mohawk called an "Operator Station") and a system unit (called a "Controller Console").^{[4]: Intro_p.3} Up to four floppy disk drives could be housed in the latter.

• Floppies contained 74 tracks, 26 128-character sectors per track. Track 0 was the index track. A floppy contained up to 1,898 128-character records.^{[4]: Diskettes, p.2}
• Screen - The 21/20 used a 480 character (12 lines x 40 characters) screen. The 21/40 could use either that screen or a larger, industry-standard sized 1,920 character screen (24 lines x 80 characters).
• 45 Characters/second printer - The Model 2141 printer's line width was (up to) 132 characters; the character set accommodated a 96-character set.
• Line printers - Lines/minute speeds were
  • up to 185 LPM (Model 2142-1)
  • up to 340 LPM (Model 2142-2)
  • up to 600 LPM (Model 2145)
• IBM Mainframe-compatible 9-track tapes drives:
  • Model 2481 - 800 BPI
  • Model 2482 - 1600 BPI

Mohawk's MOBOL—Mohawk Business Oriented Language—was described as "look[ing] nothing like COBOL".^[13][14]

The language's source code was compiled, rather than being run interpretively.^[4]

After a MOBOL program was compiled, a utility named MOBOLIST was used to display applicable messages (if any) for errors detected during compilation.^{[4]: Intro_p.1}