The
History of X10
Way back in
1970, a group of Scottish engineers formed Pico Electronics. The company
developed the original single-chip calculator. In 1974, Pico developed
a programmable record deck in partnership with Birmingham Sound Reproducers
and the seed was sown for a remote control for lights and various
appliances. By 1975, the company’s tenth project sprung to life, named X10.
It took 3
years for products to hit the stores after Pico and BSR morphed into X10
Ltd.
The first
system packaged was basic but effective:
-
Command
Console
-
Appliance
Module
-
Lamp
Module
A timer and
wall switch module soon followed and X10 was fully up and running.
The 1980s saw
the introduction of a computer interface (CP-290). At the midpoint of this
decade, BSR faded into oblivion with X10 (USA) stepping in. This is
where Atari enters the picture. Seeing that this is a popular
method of controlling devices through the home and with the CP-290 having
come out,
Atari saw the
next logical step - to create a BSR type X10 Interface and Remote
Transmitter Card to be able to
allow an Atari XL home computer to fully manage an entire home, from lights
to the thermostat to
the outside sprinklers. No physical BSR/RTC X10 cards for the Atari
1090 have been found
(yet), but given that the other proposed cards from Atari have surfaced, it
is still possible that
a prototype BSR card may one day appear.
