The Associated Press: Long-struggling Nortel files for bankruptcy

The Associated Press: Long-struggling Nortel files for bankruptcy
Well, ain't this a bittersweet moment...... ? In 1978 as I was walking home from Rockwell Collins in Richardson I came across a new building on Arapaho Rd. being constructed. Then a few months later it was finished and inhabited by a new firm known previously as Dan-Ray (later Danray). They were doing telecom and I had decided that I didn't get a fair shake at Rockwell Collins and my one year contract was up in June. So I walked in, arranged an interview, and subsequently 1) got a job and 2) cut my walk to work in half; and 3) cut some headhunter out of a finder's fee as I was a walk-on hire. Danray in the spring of 1978 had just been bought by Northern Telecom (later Nortel). It was their entré into the DFW area and the soon to explode carrier switching business in the southern 48. Danray had some Texas Instruments blood flowing in its veins, including the CEO, James Donald. Danray had taken a computer controlled PBX (a novel idea in the mid-1970s) and transformed it into a carrier switch. The computer driving the switch was a pair of mini-computers. Like, when was the last time you heard the term "mini-computer"?? At any rate I had the distinct privilege to work at Danray with Mr. Donald and some really smart folks. I stayed there for about a year and helped construct a Really Big (Bear) of a switch with a 4000 port switch matrix. [Kids these days used to 100,000 and much larger switching cores might think of this as ancient history, but that 4000 port core was a whopping 4X increase over the previous machine.] I went off with some of the engineering talent from Danray in the spring of 1979 who formed Intecom. I had a genuine Nortel badge for just a few weeks; before that we proudly wore Danray badges.
Turns out that that "talent" was better at stealing ideas from Northern Telecom and we got our tails sued by Northern Telecom. One of my first lessons in the Really Tough World out there: finally in early 1980 I got into a race of "could those scoundrels at Intecom fire me before I got to the door on my way out?" (Answer was yes) The first time I had ever lost a job and with it stock options that later would be worth over a million dollars. And Intecom finally had to fork over future earnings for their ill gotten intellectual theft from Nortel. In the fall of 1982 I returned to work for a company under Mr. Donald's leadership, Digital Switch Corporation, later DSC Corporation, where I worked 15 successful years. Many of the principals at DSC were alumni of Danray. Those were heady days. And there were a number of us who had no love lost at all for Northern Telecom.
So, fare thee well Nortel. It has been over 30 years since I worked for their then Danray group, but I remember it and the fine colleagues there very well.