Smoke Signal Broadcasting, Inc. (SSB), later known as Smoke Signal, was an American computer company founded in 1976 by Frederic Jerome "Ric" Hammond of Hollywood, California. The company earned its reputation by offering expansions for the Southwest Technical Products (SWTPC) 6800 microcomputer. It later manufactured its own line of computers, called the Chieftain. Though it remains little-known,[1] Smoke Signal was an early and important manufacturer of multi-user computer systems.[2]
Hammond, an enthusiast of radio who worked at CBS as a programming director, set out his company to act as a consulting business for broadcast entities but quickly leaned into the computer industry. According to Byte, Smoke Signal Broadcasting was the first third-party company to offer expansions for SWTPC. Their floppy disk drive system expansion and accompanying OS-68 operating system proved such a success that it spurred the development of the Chieftain, itself running OS-68. While later iterations of the Chieftain won praise for technical merit, the refusal to invest in a centralized source of software turned off some customers.
Following the company's poor performance in the mid-1980s, Hammond relegated Smoke Signal Broadcasting to the status of a support line for existing customers before disestablishing it in 1991. He formed another corporation in 1987, this time in the real estate industry, but this proved short-lived after the housing market collapsed in Ventura County. Hammond later revisited his original passion of radio in a couple of professional settings before his death in 2012.
^Clark 2001, p. A.1.
^Nadeau 2002, p. 122.
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