Network Computing Devices

Network Computing Devices (NCD) was a company founded in 1987 to produce a new class of products now known as a "thin client". It was founded in Mountain View, CA, and when it closed it was headquartered in Portland, Oregon.The corporate founders were Mike Harrigan, Doug Klein, Dave Cornelius, Ed Basart, Martin Eberhard, and Kevin Martin.At that time these devices were known as network terminals or X Terminals. Judith Estrin and William Carrico joined the company about 6 months after its founding as its new CEO and executive vice president, and led the company through its IPO in 1992. The products were some of the earliest examples of a thin client and providing remote access to data in something other than ASCII as was common with traditional terminals of the time.The X Protocol provided a way to show high resolution images of data and graphics over a network connection. NCD supported a range of network protocols including TCP/IP, Token-Ring, DECnet and others.