The Idea of Smart Terminal

I had some new worries when the monitor business was going smoothly. Monitor manufacturers mushroomed and participated in the price competition, which resulted in the gradual decline of black and white game consoles. Therefore, it was hard to tell the future of“TELE VIDEO” if we could not prepare alternatives for monitors in advance.

Although orders for black and white monitors were decreasing, I had to frequently travel to the factory in Seoul. I took buses and airplanes often, as usual. When I was purchasing the booked airline ticket in front of the window one day, I noticed the repeating action of one employee at the airport by accident. It was the CRT terminal that caught my attention.

CRT terminal is a terminal device with a monitor and a keyboard, which is mainly applied at an airport or a hotel and somewhere else for the input and output of reservation information. Such a terminal device does not have the function of self-editing text or extracting the memorized data.

That is, such a terminal device is connected to a host computer and serves as a simple destination station for data receiving and display of a simple number or symbol after the simple number or symbol is input. Therefore, this terminal device also has an alias called dumb terminal. The reason is that it almost cannot complete its own task at all.

I had a new idea. Now that I could produce outstanding monitors, it was entirely possible to make use of the existing expertise to produce CRT terminals and sell them. Since global economy was booming in those days, application of such terminals was boosting rapidly at airports or hotels and other places.

So, I purchased a CRT terminal and dismantled it. LEAR SIERGER was the first company that produced CRT terminals. We had mastered technology of game cards, and the monitor production line was also running very stably, together with the technology for the keyboard. Our production of dumb terminals was only a matter of time.

However, this was not as passionate as it used to be. On the contrary, we had a bit hesitation which we did not have when producing monitors before. Our monitor boosted its advantage of ultra-low price in its competition with monitors produced by other enterprises. This was benefited from the wonderful idea provided by the Korean TV manufacturer.

But we had no advantage at all for the terminal devices we planned to develop. Comparing with those products from LEAR SIERGER or ADDS, we had no advantage, and there was no conditions that could significantly reduce the price. If we put into production and sold them after R&D, we were not sure what new products would appear on the market then.

Unexpectedly, my daughter inspired me another way. That day, when I was sitting alone in the studio in a daze, my eldest daughter walked to me. She was approaching to the school age, showing great interest in writing characters. She touched the items on the table, and then typed on the keyboard.

“Dad, why the word“I” typed did not appear on the screen?”

“Oh, that 's because there's no such program yet.”

“What is the program?”

“Program helps to display the word you type on the screen.”

“Then why there is no program? Why not make it?”

Yes. This is a very simple truth. Just make it if it does not exist. It was absolutely possible to entitle intelligence to the“dumb terminal”. That was, applying the processing technology of micro-information on the terminal board. Thus, we used the processing principle of micro-information in“dumb terminal”, which was originally planned for game cards but was abandoned later.

Supposing a micro-information processing IC (integrated circuit) was sold at about USD 10, the production was feasible then. Just add an integrated circuit with the cost of USD 10, we could change our terminals from the“dumb” to“smart”.

No product was then available with the function of micro-information processing, but only the function of“press-and-send”. For example, press“A” and“A” would be sent to the computer immediately. Since editing was not possible, the consequence was serious once a wrong input was typed. Therefore, you should be very careful with which caused huge inconvenience. In this case,“dumb terminal” was a good choice due to its reasonable price.“Dumb terminal” was sold at around USD 900, while a computer with advanced editing function was higher than USD 2,000.

Situation might completely change if I added the function of microprocessor. I immediately started the research with experts in microprocessor. Technology expertise accumulated during the R&D of game cards was made full use of. Previous hesitation was gradually changed into self-confidence.