day. My god, was my mother mad at me.
Randy Ubillos was studying computer engineering at the University of Miami. He continued to write and sell programs for Commodore computers in his spare time.
I only lasted three years at college because I was just so bored and not at all challenged and although my parents were freaked out at first, I left college and went into the software business full-time.
Ubillos started Computer Applications Inc. with Steve Pierce in Raleigh, NC to handle contract programming. With a team that included David Dixon and Emilio Sotolongo, they created the Key-Quest 64 and Super Black Belt Karate C64 games.
The programs and projects that I was doing with our business were way more advanced than anything I was learning at school.
Steve Edelman studied electrical engineering at Cornell University located in Ithaca, New York. He poured over hobbyist computers and the fledgling PC industry’s newsletters.
I built my own CPU. It had a hand etched PC board, a hand-bent metal case, a hand-wired transformer, a block of aluminum I machined to make a paper-tape reader, and 1K of memory. By the spring of my senior year in college it finally ran. I was hooked.
Edelman started his own personal computer company, Ithaca Intersystems, shortly after graduating. He and fellow Cornell alum worked in a small rented space in the Collegetown neighborhood where they had a moderate success with a Zilog Z80-based computer.
Zilog had been founded by Federico Faggin who had led the design and development of the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004,
John Markhoff explained in a New York Times profile:
Just as Steve Jobs had phoned David Packard, then chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, to ask for parts for the original Apple computer, Edelman called Mr. Faggin to ask him for a microprocessor chip to help get him started.
Ithaca Intersystems moved to larger offices outside of town and released a Z8002-based machine at almost the same time as the microcomputer industry fizzled out. Edelman spent several years flying around the world as a messenger for courier services before returning to the US.
RUXTO-CUE
Andy Maltz had worked through the previous summer at Ruxton’s facility in Burbank before he returned to complete his university degree on the East coast. Maltz was in the process of interviewing with IBM and Hughes for possible job openings after graduation when he received a call from Bill Hogan.
Bill spoke about Ruxton's plans for the future and he mentioned an editing system that he was involved with and how he needed a systems engineer for the company. I thought, well I could go to IBM and become an expert in one chip, or I could go to Hollywood! Pretty easy decision to make and my feeling was that there probably weren't many degree'd engineers in Hollywood, so I could probably have an impact. I moved West.
Maltz worked on Ruxton’s Dubner CBG-2 and the company’s award winning video/film system. Then a new task was added to his roster:
I met the legendary Adrian Ettlinger as Bill explained the venture that he and Adrian had formed to develop a new editing system. With Adrian's previous product being the AutoCue and Bill's company being Ruxton, it then became known as the Ruxto-Cue editing system.
Adrian Ettlinger recalls:
With the Ruxto-Cue, Andy was tasked with completing the hardware design, the systems engineering, including the low level disc controller software and the ability to create an edit list generator for a system written in Z80 Assembly language. We had some unique challenges, like how do you put an 8-inch floppy based RT-11 file system on an industrial computing platform, how do you create CMX lists while using a very low level code base. Essentially, all of the edit data sat on top of the Script Mimic, which was the key innovation of the system and it made for some long nights and intricate software development work.
Patrick Gregston was working in a telecine booking at Ruxton when Bill Hogan called him in to see a demonstration of a new video editing system.
"You gotta see this", Bill said. I hadn't even heard of Adrian (Ettlinger) and I remember seeing the first system, it was literally a folding catering table, with a bunch of decks and wires all over the place and an IBM 8088 computer with the light pen screen working a grid. I remember thinking - that it looked somewhat messy but I also thought this is very cool. I had seen literature in the trade press on Lucasfilm's EditDroid but that system wasn't something you saw in person.
You had to be one of a handful of people working on it who saw the EditDroid and I certainly wasn't going to see it at Ruxton!I looked around a bit and said to Adrian, ‘what's with the light pen and the grid?’ and he smiled and replied ‘You editors all say different stuff about what you need in editing systems but everybody's got a script and a grease pencil’ and to be honest I didn't really know what he meant for years.
Then as I learnt more about Adrian and his work, I realised he had obviously seen a Moviola years before and thought that's what I have to emulate, that's my metaphor.
The Ruxto-Cue used Sony Betamax machines to feed camera rushes but Bill Hogan told Ettlinger of the JVC BR-6400U, a VHS video deck that he thought was better suited. Ettlinger recalls
Bill at that time had been making use of the JVC machine. Once I studied it, it didn't take me long at all to realize that it would be a superior machine to use.
The arrangement between Ettlinger and Hogan had provided sufficient room and manpower to create a proof of concept but without finance and a permanent base to work from, few would take the Ruxto-Cue seriously. Ettlinger turned to an old friend from his period of automating studio lighting at CBS.
Milton (Milt) Foreman was the former CEO of ColorTran Industries and had won the technical Oscar in 1964 for his invention of versatile and compact quartz iodine lamps. Ettlinger recalls:
Milt had come to the motion picture industry from a different route than most. He was originally a metallurgical engineer working for a steel company and over a number of years he established himself as a very good manager and after that he was then hired to head up the lighting company ColorTran. He was very much aware of what could be done with technology within the movie industry.
Not only did Foreman understand technology he had many contacts around Hollywood. He had been a consultant for the Association of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, the Samuel Goldwyn Stages and the Kaufmann Astoria Studio in New York. Using some investment money they moved into apartment U224, at the Oakwood Apartments in Burbank where Ettlinger lived and worked. Andy Maltz recalls:
We were still working on the system, while in the background Milt Foreman was trying to secure funding for the next stage. In fact, I'll never forget my first meeting with Milt at the Oakwood Apartments. I would go over to meet with Adrian, tweaking the system and this one time, Milt was sitting there on the sofa and he looks over at me and asks the others, ‘Who's this guy?’ It felt pretty intimidating at the time as Milt was an old-school guy and I was new, but over time and as the system evolved, Milt became a great business mentor to me.
As Ettlinger and Maltz continued coding, Foreman worked on a deal with Jerry and Al Lapin of the American iHop restaurant
