Intergraph
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Intergraph was founded in 1969 as M&S Computing, Inc., by ex-IBM engineers who had been working on the Saturn rocket for the Apollo program. M&S Computing assisted NASA and the U.S. Army in developing systems that would apply digital computing to real-time missile guidance.
From this initial work, M&S Computing was among the pioneers in the development of interactive computer graphics systems, which allowed engineers to display and interact with drawings and associated alphanumeric information. The first system sold was a mapping system for Nashville/Davidson County local government.
In 1980, M&S Computing changed its name to Intergraph Corporation, reflecting its involvement in interactive graphics. The first interactive CAD system, Intergraph Graphics Design System (IGDS) quickly became an industry benchmark, and the basis for the MicroStation file format, the PC-based CAD product owned by Bentley Systems, of which Intergraph was a part-owner. The corporation became publicly owned in 1981, trading on the NASDAQ market under the symbol INGR. Intergraph began producing its own computer hardware based initially on VAX-based hardware and ultimately using its own Clipper chip (acquired from Fairchild Semiconductor) for a line of workstations that ran CLIX, their version of UNIX. This was the basis for a powerful and successful hardware business that eventually became a springboard for Intel and Windows NT-based workstations. Intergraph expanded its product line to other software areas such as electronics and printed circuit board design, electronic publishing, mapping & GIS, technical information management, dispatch management (E-911), architecture and building design, plant design, and image processing and photogrammetry systems.
At present, Intergraph consists of 2 divisions:
Intergraph has been known to support open file formats, illustrated by Intergraph's membership in the Open Geospatial Consortium.
On August 31, 2006, Intergraph announced it was going to be acquired by an investor group led by Hellman & Friedman LLC and Texas Pacific Group, making the company privately held.
