EXTEL AC31 Teleprinter  used for REUTERS News Service

From the SMECC History of Journalism Collection  www.smecc.org 

EXTEL CORPORATION 

A Brief History 

August 27. 2001 

Shortly after Walt Zenner retired as Vice President of Research and Development 
at the Teletype Corporation in 1964 he and Peter Mero, developer of the Electrowriter, 
formed the Quotemasrer Corp. 

The company started small with just a couple of technicians working under the 
direction of Zenner in a leased building in Rosemont. near the (Y Hare airport. Their first 
product was a stock ticker. It bad a continuously running typewheel and printing was 
done on the 11)'. here were already stock tickers on the market but the Quotemaster had 
a unique selection feature. A customer could gel up the stock symbols he was following 
and the ticket would print only those symbols as trades were made on the exchanges. 
This eliminated the usual searching through hundreds of feet or paper tape for the stock 
trades a customer was interested in. 

TransLux. the company that made projectors for the stock exchange purchased 
the right to the product and planned for its manufacture. Shortly thereafter, the economy 
look <'II downturn and production plans were put on hold. 

In addition to the product Translux wanted the right to the name Quotemaster, 
This was granted but now the company had to find a new name, In England the telegraph 
systems are operated by the federal government along with the telephone and post office, 
The London stock exchange had a private telegraph company for its ticker and financial 
news operations. This company was called the Exchange Telegraph but people used a 
very popular nick name. Ex Tel. This nick name was not registered so Peter adopted it 
for the new name of this small company. The name added prestige in Europe out of 
proportion to the American company with a staff or five. 

With the inflow of funds from the sale of the ticker, work began on a dot matrix 
printer. By 196911 first model had been developed, Electronics for the printer was solid­
state transistor logic, with the mechanical parts limited to a stepping motor to control the 
position of the print head and magnet driven needles to print the matrix character. The 
mechanical part of the printer was almost ridiculously simple. The logic. that converted 
the incoming teletypewriter characters to the 5 x 7 matrix characters was a major part of 
the electronics, As the. first model approached completion Texas Instrument announced 
the development of a single chip which was perfectly suited for this purpose, It was 
immediately included in the product, resulting in an excellent system. 

The small staff had started with a totally new concept. and after one year, had a 
working model of a very attractive product The bank account, however, "vas gone. 

Mero had never been enthusiastic about the product but now bad to sell it ... there 
was no alternative. He took it to New York and demonstrated it to Reuters, the business 
news company. He. returned from the trip and told Zenner excitedly and with some awe 
in his voice "They liked it." 

As the sales negotiation proceeded, a group of Reuters executives visited the 
Extel factory, Mero arranged for eleven additional people to populate the factory floor 
during the exhibit and demonstrations, since there were only five people on staff in the 
company at that time. 

Reuters ordered a substantial number of printers and with their order in hand, 
Mere set about to raise funds for the forthcoming manufacture of the printers. Kemper 
Insurance Company bought 51% of the company, and with new funds the company 
leased factory space in the: northern suburb of Northbrook. At this point Zenner lost 
interest as the company's activities changed from research and development to mass 
production and he resigned from the company. (still holding his half of the 49% of the 
remaining shares).

Peter Mere continued as President and Vice President of Sales.  As production 
increased  and printers were put in service, he sold 'this specialized primer to about 30 
different news companies around. the world. 

Extel continued to produce the printer and manufactured. about a. quarter million 
printers. 

Zenner said that, in his opinion the Extel printer was the first successful dot 
matrix teleprinter, 

Bette Sharpe of CouryGraph Productions/Glendale Daily Planet shared this  photo  with one of our other  Arrowhead Independent  Newspaper  and they 'FRONT PAGED' it!

We share  stories, photos and  video  with many media outlets  - Ed #