I. P. Sharp Associates

History

The company's founders worked as a team at the Toronto division of Ferranti, Ferranti-Packard, which sold many products to the Canadian military and large businesses. The team worked on operating system and compiler design for the company's range of mainframe computers, the Ferranti-Packard 6000. In 1964 Ferranti sold off its computing division to International Computers and Tabulators, which almost immediately closed the Toronto office. Ian Sharp, the chief programmer, founded I. P. Sharp Associates in December 1964 with the other members of the team (Roger Moore, Ted McDorman, Don Smith, David Oldacre, Brian Daly, and James McSherry) and David Butler shortly after.

The firm began with contract programming on IBM System/360 series mainframes, and to some degree took over Ferranti's former military work. It became particularly well used by the Canadian Navy, setting up an office in Ottawa near DND headquarters. Ted McDorman and Jim McSherry were lead players in this. At one point IPSA could claim to have played a part in every computer system onboard Canadian Navy ships.

In the early years, IPSA collaborated with its sister company Scientific Time Sharing Corporation (STSC) of Bethesda, Maryland, USA, each retailing the same services in their respective countries. IPSA and STSC jointly developed their software. Eventually they devised separate product names. They separated as Sharp APL and APL*Plus. Initially, IPSA served STSC's customers from its Toronto datacenter. In 1972, STSC built its own datacenter. Afterward, both firms provided disaster recovery for each other: if one of the datacenters could not function, the other datacenter would accommodate both vendors' users.

Timeline

1964 – I. P. Sharp Associates formed

1970 – Dominant player in timesharing business

1978 – Arrival of Amdahl V8, high performance IBM 370 alternative

1980 – Sharp APL available as an in-house product

1984 – Sharp APL for the PC available

I. P. Sharp Associates Limited opened a Computer Products Division in Carleton Place, Ontario. One of their 19 inch rack products was a Control Unit to drive sixteen displays with DMA refresh speed for Transport Canada. These supported the Air Traffic Controllers and provided status of runway sensors and weather data etc.