Education & Early Career
Gerhardt attended Illinois State University, studying marine biology, and later changed to computer science. While at ISU, Gerhardt joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.
From the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, he was employed in graphic arts, but continued working on developing software. He focused on developing programs for Tandy computers, spending several years as part of the software-development community that grew up around the Tandy products.
Eventually, Gerhardt took a job with Tandy, customizing software for midwest business users and concentrating on Tandy's Radio Shack Color Computer, known to its fans as the COCO. Originally designed as a cartridge-game system and 64K home computer, the COCO was a great success, having sold over six million units in its first few years. Gerhardt created a vast amount of software for the Color Computer, and, as consumer demand grew for peripherals, the COCO was used more as a computer and less as a game-player.
Early in 1983, Gerhardt started his own software-development company in Chicago, primarily for developing COCO applications. However, because he was acquainted with the Motorola 68 family of processors (the COCO used the 6809E), Gerhardt saw an opportunity to develop software on the low cost COCO that could then be ported for use on other 68-type CPUs.
By 1984 Gerhardt had focused this effort on developing portable code for CAD/CAM system, many of which used the Motorola 68000 CPUs. Gerhardt and his team joined with a group of developers working out of San Jose California with similar CAD/CAM interests working on the CASCADE project. This group, and the companies with whom they were affiliated, released a series of successful CAD technologies. However, in late 1985, with the release of the IBM PC-based “Auto CAD”, Gerhardt's group began to slowly lose market share; the group dispersed during 1986 and the code base was sold to Computervision.
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