34. WLC "RASCOL" Business Plan, 1968
Scope and Contents
Other JVM Archival documents and reports describe an entirely new concept in OMR scanner design whereby both sides of an answer sheet can be scanned independently on a single pass through the feed mechanism, which I dubbed with the acronym Reverse Action Scan Cycle On/Off Line (RASCOL). Our 'little rascol', as we humorously called it! Brief background: when one of my mechanical engineers, Richard W. George first (cautiously or tentatively) proposed the idea to me, probably thinking I would reject his 'wild idea' out of hand, I instead encouraged him to build a simple prototype mechanism in our machine shop in an attempt to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept. Encouraged by what we observed, I authorized a full-blown development cycle. Mr. George was granted a U. S. Patent on the design. Our first victory in this regard was demonstrating the shop mockup to a group of officials from Educational Testing Service (ETS), the major student testing organization from Princeton, NJ. (ETS administers the College Board and GRE exams, among many other tests). They were so impressed with the demonstration and anticipated performance of the product that they delayed, or 'put on hold' a nearly final decision to purchase one or more OMR scanners from National Computer Systems (NCS), or archrival at the time! Instead we jointly scheduled several future benchmarks on the new design, and we landed a large order (several hundred thousand dollars) for the delivery of a turnkey OMR processing system based upon the RASCOL design. Eventually, this product was sold to other customers in Australia, Japan, as well as deployed at locations in the U. S. A re-engineered lower-cost version, the W-201 Model was sold in quantity in Japan, Korea, and other countries, and widely used in domestic locations. Although the acquisition of MRC by Westinghouse Learning Corporation (WLC) was not formally announced to the public until June 28, 1968, the two company's management discussions, analyses, planning, and future business strategies for a new WLC/MRC entity had obviously preceded this date for quite some time. One aspect of these discussions was the potential to manufacture on a significant scale the new MRC RASCOL scanner design. D. Peter Wahl was the General Manager of MRC, and a 'prime mover' in the MCR decision to be acquired by WLC, coincident with Dr. Lindquist's retirement as President of MRC. Accordingly, he submitted (per WLC request) a RASCOL Business Plan to Mr. George H. Mathiesen, General Executive, of WLC, the cover letter of the PLAN-folder dated April 2, 1968. The contents cover the key categories of 1) Cash Flow, 2) Marketing Study, and 3) Engineering. I was responsible for preparing the Engineering portion of the plan, resulting in a 26-page Design Goals Report, with an approximate equal number of pages of internal memos, cost analyses and projections. The dates range from February 6, 1968 through September 6, 1968. The 'mass manufacturing' goals, naively envisioned by WLC, were not realized, as they failed to understand that this type of capital-intensive product was suitable only for a niche' market; such as for academic institutions, or educational testing organizations similar to MRC, but we did sell - as I recall over forty years later - several dozen in U. S. applications, and others in Asia. Incidentally, WLC had me running around to Westinghouse Puerto Rico printed-circuit manufacturing plants and other installations to take 'synergistic' advantage of their mass manufacturing facilities!
Dates
- Creation: 1968
Creator
- From the Collection: McMillin, John V. (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research.
Extent
From the Collection: 14.50 Linear Feet
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Repository Details
Part of the University of Iowa Archives Repository
100 Main Library
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City IA 52242
319-335-5921
lib-spec@uiowa.edu