Now you can be a Pinball Wizard - at Work!

The world's leading HMI was inspired by an early 1980's video game called Pinball Wizard. Wonderware visionary Dennis Morin was many things, an accomplished chef, a sailor, an artist, and a linquist.   He was also fascinated by video games, he understood the technology and the psychology of gamers.

In 1986, he was also out of a job in Orange County, California, an expensive area to be unemployed.  But, he had an idea, an inspired idea.  Operators in factories around the world were monitoring their plants on text-based terminals....not very exciting, not easy to follow.

Morin's idea?  Why not build the same flexibility into the engineering software used to control valves and temperature gauges in factories?  And why not use an operating system from a still struggling startup based in Redmond, Washington called Microsoft?  Operators could play video games at work, graphically designing the plant layout, just like building their own Pinball Wizard!  Companies find the workers having fun at work are more productive workers!  Morin understood that. 

Wonderware co-founder and technology wizard Phil Huber made many trips to Microsoft headquarters to work with Steve Ballmer and his team.  The work led to Wonderware's InTouch industrial-automation software. InTouch was fun to use and increased productivity!  The genius of Dennis Morin was that he understood technology and psychology.   He knew what would excite the worker on the factory floor and the boardroom executive.

Speaking of fun, Wonderware was founded on April fool's day, 1987 (Apple computer, was also  founded on April fool's day). The founding partners were Morin, Huber, Bill Urone, Cole Chevalier, and Jerry Cuckler.  Peter Pitsker became the first CEO and Dianne Castignetti became employee #7 to run the office.

After all these years, Wonderware is still #1!   It just didn't just create a new market, it created a new business culture!