Mark Williams Company
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1977 in Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Founder | Robert Swartz |
| Defunct | 1995 |
| Headquarters | Northbrook, Illinois , United States |
| Products | Coherent, csd debugger, Let's C compiler, Mark Williams C (CP/M-86), Mark Williams C (Atari ST), XYBasic |
The Mark Williams Company was a modest software enterprise established in 1977 by Robert Swartz in Chicago, Illinois, later moving its base to Northbrook, Illinois. The firm is known for creating Coherent, an early Unix-like operating system designed for IBM PCs, along with multiple C compilers. The business discontinued operations in 1995. Its name honors Robert Swartz's father, William Mark Swartz.
Initially involved in producing the soft drink Dr. Enuf, Robert Swartz shifted the company's focus to software development with encouragement from his father. The Mark Williams Company held a patent (US patent 4956809) concerning 'byte ordering'. Nevertheless, the emergence of free alternatives such as Linux, licensed under the GNU General Public License, led to a significant drop in Coherent's commercial sales, ultimately resulting in the company's shutdown in 1995.
Products
- Coherent, a Unix-compatible operating system for IBM PC hardware.
- csd, a debugger for C source code.
- Let's C, an affordable professional-grade C compiler tailored for IBM PCs.
- Mark Williams C tailored for CP/M-86 systems.
- Mark Williams C designed for the Atari ST, recognized as the first prominent C development environment on that platform.
- XYBasic, a process control BASIC interpreter for CP/M capable of running independently on an Intel 8080 CPU.