TecMar was founded by a Dr. Martin Alpert in Cleveland, Ohio in 1974.
The name "Tecmar" being derived from MARty's TEChnology. The company
was formed to manufacture pulmonary medical equipment which Alpert designed
while he was a medical student. The initial products were scientific
data acquisition products used in the medical industry, but the company soon
fount there was a market for the products in multiple diverse industries.
Soon after starting the company Alpert initially came up with a new idea in
the pulmonary area that was microprocessor based. As part of the
development of the medical product, he needed certain components that
weren't available for microprocessors, specifically analog-to-digital and
digital-to-analog converters. He developed them in a general sense so
they could be used in Tecmar's medical products but also offer them to the
general market.
As we know this was the time the S-100 bus started to appear and Alpert saw
the utility of putting his designs of S-100 boards. This was Tecmar's
more or less specific contribution to S-100 boards. While they did briefly
advertise a complete 8086 based S-100 based system running MP/M-86 later in 1981, I'm
not sure it was ever delivered in reasonable numbers. A review of this
system was written up by Chris Terry in the July 1981 issue of Microsystems
(Vol 2, #4, p18) and can be obtained
here.
Instead the company went on to developing IBM-PC "add on" board for a number
of years - some quite successfully. In 1986 they were acquired by a
technology holding company called Rexon and over the next 20 years went
through a number of changes and re-acquisitions to essentially all but
disappear today.
