The Sirius 1/ Victor 9000 was conceived by the well known computer designer Chuck Peddle the designer of the Commodore Pet. In 1980 Chuck Peddle left Commodore and with Chris Fish, formally of MOS Technology and a former financer of Commodore, founded Sirius Systems Technology. The enterprise was capitalised by Walter Kidde Inc. as daughter enterprise of the Walter Kidde Corporation. The base of operations was in Scots Valley, California, USA.

The Victor 9000 was introduced at the COMDEX'81 show in Las Vegas in (Decemder) 1981. The company was unable to market the Sirius 1 and use the "Sirius" name in the US following the ruling of a law suit brought by Sirius Software Inc. a manufacturer and distributer of computer games software preventing the use of their company name. The Sirius 1 as it was known in Europe was launched at the 'SYSTEMS' show in Munich, Germany in the last quater of 1981. The Sirius 1 was distributed in the UK by Applied Computer Technologies (ACT) and in Australia by Barson Computers. The Victor 9000 was distributed by DRG Business Machines of Weston-super-Mare (South West of England) who dealt directly with Victor Technologies in the US. Unfortunately DRG venture was not particularly successful as ACT had already established a brand name and a loyal dealer base. The dealer and press launch that was held in London was believed to have been disrupted by loyal ACT dealers. (Source: Public Relation Account Manager for DRG Business Machines ?)
The first consignment of computers coming out of the factory in the first quarter of 1982. Later in that year Victor were selling 2,000 machines a month. Victor had in excess of 50 offices in the United States and with asperations for at least 1000 or more retailers by the end of 1982.

Chuck Peddle used two of his Commodore contacts to set up subsideries in europe. David Deane set up the French division and Juergen Tepper set up the German division. Both men were ex-Mannesmann Tally people that Chuck had met during negotiations for an OEM contract to provide printers.

The Victor 9000 / Sirius 1 met with significant sucess in Europe mainly because IBM (International Business Machines) delayed the launch of their machine, the XT PC (Personal Computer) for 18 months that gave time for the Sirius 1 as a best seller. This gave the company a superior lead for a short time. ACT outsold Victor/Sirius subsidiaries and led the way in proving that application software was the key to sucessful sales. Software was sold through the ACT Pulsar branch of the company. As the Sirius 1 / Victor 9000 was marketed as a business machine most sales were achieved through small system houses as opposed to computer shops. The amazing capabilities of this machine with its 800x400 screen resolution, maximum RAM (Random Access Memory) expansion to 896kb, fully programmable keyboard and character sets were unlike and far ahead of any of the competition. The greatest and single attribute going for it was the largest software library of any similar computer of the day.

In late 1982 Sirius Systems Technology acquired Victor Business Systems a manufacturer of calculators and cash registers from Kidde Inc. and changed its name to Victor Technologies. The company made a public stock offering in the first half of 1983. Unfortunately as is the nature of the computer business the company went into Chapter 11 ( althought finances were limited the company carried on trading) until finally declaring bankruptcy. The assets of the company were acquired by Datatronic AB, a Swedish software company headed by Mats Gabrielsson. Mr Gabrielsson entered into a distribution contract with Kyocera to supply PC clones to Victor.


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