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And so I began thinking about this problem, and I was trying to find a way to combine
these two things: to have transparency but also be able to, um,… to make it seem like
you’re just adapting the program that you’re running. And ultimately what I came up with
was the Adaptive Firmware Card. Uh, in effect what the Adaptive Firmware Card did was it
sort of turned the Apple II, which was a… a single-tasking machine -- you could only
run one program at a time -- it sort of turned it into a multi-tasking machine. It was sort
of a poor man’s version of a multi-tasking machine, because you might say it was a double-tasking
machine -- you… you could run the program plus the input routine as the second routine
-- but it was a circuit board that went in the computer, and the adaptive routine that
you wanted to run resided on the… on the card, and the hardware played tricks so that
when you wanted to use that routine it would interrupt the… the program that was running,
and then it would bring up a scanning array or do Morse code or do whatever was necessary,
uh, to allow you to generate text with one or two switches. And that was, um,… and
I guess that was… that was something new. And … and I remember, I don’t know how,
but somehow Gregg Vanderheiden found out about this. I can’t remember… I might’ve written
a letter to the Trace Center, uh, or there was a contest about that time at Johns Hopkins…
JUDY: … First National Search.
RUCKER: Mmhm.
PAUL: And so I did… and I did enter this as… as… as something. But I remember we
got a call from Gregg Vanderheiden.
JUDY: It was at the university, and we shared an office, and Paul was out, and the call
comes in asking for Paul, and I say "I’m sorry he’s not here. Can I take a message?"
PAUL: But, but… you… and I’ve got to say and I… I think Gregg was… was Judy’s…
PAUL: And I think… my getting called by Gregg Vanderheiden was sort of like… like,
I don’t know, like the president himself calling.
JUDY: Well, I don’t think he was my number one hero, but he was impressive, and I was
impressed that he was calling you, and excited! [mingled voices]
PAUL: And I realized that I had finally… I had finally, after all this time, managed
JUDY: Well, I think I was also excited because you would talk about this -- I could not follow
the technology. Good! Gregg… you and Gregg can talk technology.
PAUL: Anyway, Gregg… Gregg was… Gregg was just amazing. We had long conversations,
and he… he put me in contact with Dave Kelso, who was the engineer at Trace Center and,
uh, … and he was very helpful with the… with the hardware design. Um, and Gregg even…
even talked me into, uh, writing an article with him for Byte Magazine, which it was quite
an experience. We laid bare all the secrets of the Adaptive Firmware Card.
JUDY: … like we certainly weren’t going to go commercial with it, so fine, let’s
give out all the secrets. [laughter]
PAUL: We even… you know we even gave out the… we even…
JUDY: …. the diagrams …
PAUL: … gave the circuit diagram. And that… that generated a lot of interest, and before
we knew it we were, uh, in business selling the thing. And which was… which was funny,
because I… I had no interest in going into business.
JUDY: Neither did I. It was never part of our plan.
PAUL: And… and I… I somehow thought once… once I got this thing working that, you know,
that Gregg would… that somehow we would turn it over to, uh, some company, like Prentke-Romich
maybe, and I remember Gregg saying well, yeah, but why don’t you just… why don’t you
just make a few? Why don’t you make like 25 of them, and you can sell those, and you
can get your money back and then [mingled voices].
JUDY: … because you put a lot of time and effort …
PAUL: … you could … it would be easier to, uh, interest another company in this.
Well the thing is I think he was very sly, because the thing is by the time you sell
25 you’ve written a manual, you’ve figured out how to package the thing …
JUDY: … and done… and figured out how to do invoicing and billing; you’ve got
all the business licenses. You know, you’re just… you get… you have to learn so much.
PAUL: So, in short order, we had this mom-and-pop going full bore in our dining room, and we
had the phone ringing [mixed laughter], and there was, remember Dun & Bradstreet, some
guy shows up at the door...
JUDY: … to get… do a credit or, you know, figure out our credit rating so we could buy
chips and stuff from suppliers.
PAUL: And Judy invested, I remember Judy invested $2,000 of her money to buy an Apple IIe.
JUDY: Up to that point, we never even had our own computer, because we used the Maplewood
fact, we… we never really needed to advertise because Gregg was…
JUDY: … never did…
PAUL: … was the best pitch man you could possibly hope for. Um, he would…we could
track his progress across the country, speaking engagements…
JUDY: … We’d suddenly get like a flood of orders from Texas. Well, Gregg was in Texas.
PAUL: [chuckles]. And Judy… and Judy got so, you know people would call up and they’d
say oh Gregg Vanderheiden says we have to… we have to have one of these.
JUDY: We’d ask people, you know, what are you going to use it for, and I remember one
time it was somebody with severe, profound…
RUCKER: Mmhm.
JUDY: … kids, and it was… this was when the card, you couldn’t even customize it
at that point -- it was just alphabetic and, uh, for scanning and say Morse code and, uh,
a keyboard, -- and I thought "well, you know, I think you really don’t need the Adaptive
Firmware Card. I think you need a switch interface and some inputs." (The caller responded with)
"Gregg Vanderheiden said, if you’re with special ed and you have an Apple computer,
you must buy an Adaptive Firmware Card." Okay.
RUCKER: Okay [chuckles].
JUDY: And it also … another reason that we didn’t need advertising, I think, was
that, uh, the therapists and teachers, anyone who used it and … successfully … and saw
what it could do, just had to go out and tell people.
RUCKER: Mmhm.
JUDY: So, like, we heard about Closing the Gap. We didn’t know about Closing the Gap
-- we heard about it from other people who went there, and other people were telling
them how to use the Adaptive Firmware Card.
RUCKER: Yeah.
JUDY: So, we finally went in year three and did a workshop, but it was like people spread
(the word) because it was so exciting what…
RUCKER: Yeah.
JUDY: … to see what your kids could do.
PAUL: But I… I… I think… I think for us the… probably the most amazing thing
was the community that this put us in touch with. And… and we really began hearing from
people and began realizing what was going on all across the country and across Canada.
JUDY: Yeah.
PAUL: And when we finally ended up going to Closing the Gap, it was just an amazing experience.
RUCKER: Yeah.
PAUL: I mean that was …
JUDY: … yeah. And the support from, like, other people, other vendors, um, other people
in the field; it was all so new...
RUCKER: Mmhm.
JUDY: … just completely wonderful.