CONCLUSIONS - Inventing the PC - page 173

tors required coherent guidelines and strategies for presenting
MCM computers as a functionally irresistible and economically
viable alternative. They needed a clear language highlighting
the computers' unique features and benefits to show how these
outweighed the machines' disadvantages, such as, in the case of
the MCM /70 and /700, low speed and single-line display. They
had to be provided with directions for dealing with competi-
tion from the APL and non- APL markets. Finally, they expected
MCM to showcase its technology during major computer events
such as the annual National Computer Conference in the United
States or SICOB in Europe. But MCM was unable to do any of
that. Furthermore, the company's policy against disclosing the
hardware makeup of MCM computers turned into a marketing
fiasco.
One of the most significant measures of a computer system's
performance is its operational speed, and that depends critically
on the computer's CPU . In its MCM /70, /700, and /800 promo-
tional literature, MCM never disclosed any CPU information for
its computers. In early 1973, MCM spoke of the “advanced LSI
technology” behind its MCM /70, but the company never used
the term “microprocessor” nor explicitly mentioned the Intel
8008 CPU chip employed by the computer. Perhaps the secrecy
was insisted on to avoid compromising the technological advan-
tage MCM held over inevitable followers. 23 In 1974, when the
MCM /70 was still in the development phase, the Intel 8008 chip
was already obsolete and much inferior to Intel's new 8080 CPU
device. Thus, revealing the identity of the MCM /70's CPU at that
time would have been damaging. Finally, since the introduction
of the /800 model, MCM had abandoned the microprocessor
track altogether and the microcomputer technology that MCM
had helped to pioneer could not be used as a marketing ploy
even when microcomputing came of age and other manufactur-
ers were shipping thousands of microcomputers a month.
There were some strong MCM distribution outposts, such
as SYSMO S.A. of Paris, France, which by 1976 was installing