Lance Micklus Inc.

Lance Micklus, Inc. was born in September of 1979. Although it produced a number of computer games for the Radio Shack TRS-80, it was best known for its ST80 communication products. These were the first commercially marketed communication products that made it possible for microcomputers (now called PC's) to communicate with mainframe systems (now called servers). This simple concept laid the foundation for today's sophisticated client-server systems, and the Internet itself.

The company's logo, COMPUTER MOUSE, was created for Lance by artist Jim Roden. The original black and white artwork has now been colorized and is shown above.

This is the company's founder, Lance Micklus, sitting in his office. Notice on the right side of the picture is a TRS-80 Model I which was used for most product development. On top of the monitor is the TRS-80 voice synthesizer.

Diane Bernard worked part-time as a programmer while going to the University of Vermont full-time as an engineering student. She is shown here working with the Radio Shack Color Computer I. She graduated from college with honors, married, and started a family.

The only other full-time employee was Kim Fosher. She took care of all the office tasks as well as helping with product production. All of the company accounting was done on a Radio Shack Model II computer shown in the picture. This is probably the last computer to use eight inch disk drives. Kim is now married and also has a family of her own. She now works at the Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington.

Kim also served as a beta tester. Here she's seen testing a new product on the Color Computer while Diane looks on.

OTHER TRS-80 LINKS: