The ABC- computer network and our Company
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When we founded the Fuhse GmbH in 1979 (at that time, we called the company FES Fuhse Energie System GmbH), the first microprocessors had just left the laboratories of the so called "garage companies" in the silicon valley.
Our intenstion, however, was in a different direction. The world was shaken by dramatic changes in raw material pricing and rapid market fluctuations. Our experience in plant engineering and physical chemical processes could be used to find new optimisation criteria in plants and factories. And this, in fact, gave us an important starting point for our company.
At that time, data acquisition in chemical plants or power stations or large factories - if they had a computer at all - was done by huge cable assemblies, filling cable canals by the lot. Every metering point, every switch, every monitored unit was directly connected to a central computer. And this central computer was - in most cases - just busy to register all states of the metering units. There was hardly any plant, where the central computer did, what it was meant to do: controlling the plant.
It was my idea, to replace all these cables by an intelligent system, employing the newly available micro processors. Every unit should be equipped with a microprocessor unit, which on the one hand controles the metering unit or the switch etc., and on the other hand whould deliver the data on a simple cable system. All other units are connected to the same cable, which therefore - due to its general purpose for all units - can be called "bus- cable". We thought that, in many cases, a single twisted pair of cable or a simple coaxial cable would be sufficient for all data acquisition and control in a huge plant.
We called this system "ABC- Computer network". Thereby "ABC" means "Asynchronous Bus Communication" .
This concept required an intelligent and well done communication protocoll on the "Bus"- cable. During the years 1979 to 1984, we developped this protocoll. This went hand in hand with the development of our own microprocessor units. Our first industrial controll units were already delivered to a printed board factory "Präzisions- Leiterplatten PL" in Oldenburg in 1983, and some of these first boards are still in use today.
After these first applications, we developped many different computer systems, ranging from simple switch controls to A/D- converters and multiplexers, mass spectrometer controls up to the industrial control system employing the newly developed "cockpit"- multiple computer system for extreme reliability. All these units have one thing in common: they have a direct interface to the ABC- computer network
Our motto is:We are one step nearer to the future.
Please, look at more information on the ABC- computer network and our products at
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(c) Fuhse GmbH 1997
date of last issue: 11. 3. 1997
