Did you know that JEPSAN Group has had the same phone number (616.698.8700) since 1975?  In fact, few of today's computer (or related) companies even existed in 1975, much less retained their original phone number!

Hello. I am Phil Schneider of JEPSAN Group, Incorporated.  I began JEPSAN, together with another aerospace engineer, Gary Champlin, while we both worked at Lear Siegler (now Smiths Industries) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My prior experience to this was U.S. Navy Aviation, Tactical Coordinator/Navigator (beginning in 1959) flying with Patrol Squadron Four Seven (VP-47) in the Pacific. VP-47 operated in the far West Pacific, deploying several times in and around Vietnam. After the Navy tour, my wife and I were raising a family in Binghamton, NY (late 1960's), where I worked at General Electric, then Singer Link, as well as night school at Thomas Watson School of Advance Technology (SUNY Binghamton). It was the Navy, Singer Link, and SUNY Binghamton that inspired me to start a computer company.

Having been a radio amateur operator and electro-mechanical tinkerer provided lots of fuel for this "fire." In my basement shop I made a nice little electronic ignition for an automobile.  And, I mean little - about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Devices such as this were in vogue at the time as power transistors, zero-crossing IC's, and SCR's were becoming plentiful, reliable, and inexpensive. Automobile companies considered electronic ignitions as aftermarket items. The hand built electronic ignition was powerful, reliable, and a redundant system. That is, it had the capability of being switched back to the original spark coil, breaker points scheme, from the driver's seat with the flick of a switch. The "redundant feature" was used about 3 years later when the ignition quit during a long hot summer trip. This project was the real seed of JEPSAN Group, Inc.

Well......Gary Champlin and I were employed at Lear Siegler as avionic systems and software engineers, writing software for the P-3B anti-submarine aircraft NAV computer, and working at night as electronic tinkers on various microcomputer projects in our basements. We were hooked on computers; traveling down to Kalamazoo and Lansing for seminars given by Ed Roberts' people from the MITS Company of, I believe, Albuquerque, New Mexico. (The MITS Company was not the first experimentor's computer kit company, but it was generally recognized as the most successful of the early ones). The time period of this activity was 1975 - 1976, and the names Gates, Jobs, Sculley, Apple, PC, PET, C64, Tandy, and Tandon did not exist yet in the small computer realm, because, aside from hobbyists and engineers there was no realm. The big computer trade rags did not really acknowledge microcomputers until 1979 when Big Blue began to rumble about a PC in its future. But there WAS a magazine for us tinkerers and it was called BYTE. Gary got it first and I followed. I do not know about Gary, but I have faithfully kept every copy since 1974 (my basement is sinking <BGGG>). Oh, I have some other mags too, Dr. Dobbs Ortho.......; darn I should start that museum! The real shift in this infant (micro) computer market came from Ed Robert's MITS; Gary Champlin had the first 8080 model while I got the MITS 680 Motorola 6800 microcomputer model. Switches abunch! And plenty of lights also! We were on our way, with our 1st project being an engineering lab calculator that operated in hex, octal, as well as the typical decimal arithmetic. We were SO Excited! The day we got it working (its size was about that of a medium suitcase) the upstart Texas Instruments company introduced the first model of its famous "hand-held" series of lab calculators! I guess you could say TI gave us our first lesson in business <grin>.

"How'd you come by that name: JEPSAN?" We had an interesting time coming up with a name. I did not wish to have a company name that contained words like "computer science," "computer," "data" or the like. Therefore, I became real original and started with "Group K." Then it became JEPSAN Group K, and last we settled on JEPSAN Group, Inc.. We abandoned "JEPSAN Group K," because it was a real tongue twister, and we constantly received mail addressed to a non-existant employee: Jepson Gropski. "JEPSAN" is an anagram made of letters from family names.

By 1977 Gary departed JEPSAN Group because his job took him to Hawaii, poor guy! I continued on in my basement, making and selling speciality computer items items to engineering firms and to small businesses just venturing into the infant microcomputer market. We had correctly predicted the coming microcomputer revolution/evolution. As yet, there was no sign of a "personal computer." That would come later. The vocabulary was small and it included words such as "small business applications, Serendipity Software, IMSAI, MITS, Pitman, TinyBasic, Godbout, Cromemco, S-100 Bus, Digital Research, and CP\M, SOL, PERSCI and a host of other phrases toooooo numerous to mention!" (maybe more on that later)

By this time I had developed a reputation for being able to fix just about any electro-mechanical thing. I picked up a broken General Automation 12 bit computer (with a mag core memory no less) over in Chicago. It was from a McDonalds hamburger stand. I fixed it, and it became JEPSAN's first major computer "re-sale." It was a pretty hard sale because it was to my employer at the time, Lear Siegler, and there were rules against employees selling items to the company. I had discovered that one of the automated machines on the manufacturing floor included a GA 12bit computer similar to mine. Further inspection revealed it was not only similar, it was identical in model AND the serial numbers were contiguous. Walla!

OK, let me take a break and continue this a little later. Thanks!

Copyright 1996-1997, Phil Schneider