Ed at SMECC FOUND: In the Motorola annual report from 1967 CONTROL SYSTEMS DIVISION The division completed the best year in its six-year history. Orders increased 40% over the previous year. Additionally, two significant objectives were reached. The first was a move to achieve international stature in the process controls field. Early in the year, a sales and service organization was established in Puerto Rico to serve the mushrooming petro-chemical industry in that area. Also, early in 1968, the division established a fully owned subsidiary in England. The subsidiary, known as Motorola Control Systems, Ltd., will service the process control and information processing markets in the United Kingdom and the European Common Market. Second, through product innovation and sales penetration, the division took a giant step in achieving its primary goal ? placing Motorola firmly in the field of information processing. At the Fall joint computer conference in California, the division unveiled its MDR-1000 Document Reader, the first of a family of low-cost input terminals for information processing systems. The MDR-1000 provides a simple means for entering data into an electronic processing system directly from marked or punched cards and documents. This offers systems designers a new, low-cost method of getting raw data directly from the source, without need for skilled data processing equipment operators. The initial application of this "industry-first" is in processing daily operating information for one of the Bell Telephone systems. The immediate success of the MDR-1000 resulted in an expansion of this customer's program. Potential applications for the MDR-1000 in business, education, industry and government are virtually endless. The division's continuing success in marketing its three major product lines ? supervisory control systems, data systems and process controls systems ? increases its technical skills and disciplines in the related field of information processing. The primary skill involved is computer technology. In the area of process control instrumentation, for instance, the division received several petroleum refinery contracts to supply complete networks of field instruments, plus all related computer interface equipment. Three of these major contracts called for tying in with computers manufacturers. Supervisory control system sales also gained impetus during the year. A large system was designed and installed for the Minnesota Power & Light Co., and other systems are under construction for the Getty Oil Co. and Marathon Pipeline Co. The sale of additional equipment for systems installed in previous years continued to increase during the year. This segment of the total sales picture is significant as engineering development costs were generally charged against the original sale. ok lets find one of these readers! sheet and card.... neat! Thanks Ed Sharpe archivist for SMECC _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) In a message dated 3/24/2016 1:02:25 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, silent700 at gmail.com writes: I don't know their history as regards computing before the 1980s but Motorola seems to have had a brief flirtation with data processing in the form of their MDR-1000 mark-sense and punched-card reader, a brochure for which I scanned tonight: http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/index.php?dir=%2Fcomputing/Motorola The original had been damaged by mildew and staining, which I tried to clean up a bit without sacrificing the graphics on the covers, but the inside fared much better. If you're like me, you'll enjoy some juicy shots of telco datacomm equipment, too. I know HP made a similar desktop device but I don't believe this is a rebadge of any other company's product. Or is it? As always, feel free to add to your collections, etc. -j