[Coco] Another bit of Coco history for the Image Producers

[L. Curtis Boyle]

Found another little bit of history, from Dick Ainsworth (including pre-Coco), from an email he sent me in 2007. May also help your book.
(When is it too late to send you this kind of stuff, anyways?) ;)


Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:34:30 -0500
From: Dick Ainsworth <ainsworth at qwerty.com>
Subject: Re: Early days of the Image Producers
To: "L. Curtis Boyle" <curtisboyle at sasktel.net>

Hi Curtis...

Sure.  Glad to help.  Email or call 608.924.9234 for all the info you want.

Could you also send me Al Baker's email address?  I've lost contact.

Image Producers was originally a graphic arts studio in 
Michigan.  When I joined as Creative Director, Image Producers became 
a full service ad agency.  My previous ad accounts with other Chicago 
advertising agencies included several early computer companies. When 
the "computer revolution" actually started, I gradually shifted from 
creating ads to creating software, and Image Producers became a 
software company.

The CoCo was a great machine, in its day.  We had two of the first 
breadboard versions to be developed by Tandy.  Security was very 
tight.  I wrote the Color Computer Learning Lab and designed most of 
the games that were released by Tandy with the original computer.  I 
also designed several of the "serious" software packages, including 
the Time Manager and a couple of others.

In our "glory days" at Image Producers we had quite a few programmers 
working for us, including Al Baker, who was program director.  Glen 
was one of our best programmers and a joy to work with.  Glen and I 
developed several products, but I don't remember the details.

My most successful design was the original "Typing Tutor" which was 
distributed by both Microsoft and IBM.  When I left Image Producers I 
created the next version of "Typing Tutor" and continued development 
of this product line.

It will be interesting for you to see how others recall these 
events.  It is quite likely that Image Producers could be called the 
first software company.  I'm not sure that this is accurate, but we 
were the first to offer programs on audio tape with the Bally 
computer.  The only other person offering tape-based software at that 
time was Bill Gates.  I wrote the manual for Bill's original BASIC 
tape cassette.  I believe that Bill's BASIC and my Bally Basic 
Learning Lab were both released on audio tape at the same time by 
GRT, a commercial recording and music distribution studio.

Regards...

...Dick

At 02:16 PM 4/5/2007, you wrote:
>I also sent this email to Al Baker, and have talked with Glenn Sogge in
>the past about some of this as well.
>Dick, a few years ago (2002, to be exact), I interviewed and met with
>Glenn Sogge, about some of the early history of The Image Producers and
>their involvement with the TRS-80 Color Computer (Coco) in teh early days.
>I used it to update some entries on my Coco games webpage
>(http://nitros9.lcurtisboyle.com/coco_game_list.html). I am trying to get
>more complete information now, and also want to put up a history of the
>company, along with interviews with several of it's members/founders,
>including yourself, both for my webapages, and for an entry for The Image
>Producers that I am doing for www.mobygames.com. Would you be willing to
>answer some questions by email?
>Thanks for your time!
>
>--
>L. Curtis Boyle
>