ACT in 1977 then based in Birmingham was a computer bureau and systems house. The company started selling an American machine called the ACT 800. This machine was very different although it had a 3.5 inch floppy on the face inside it actually had two ports for the then almost obsolete 8 inck floppy drives. It was an intregrated machine much like the Commodore PET. It was not a sucess and was soon to fade into history. Following this the chairman Rodger Foster decided to expand into selling software for micro-computers.
In 1979 ACT purchased Petsoft a company publishing software for the Commodore Pet. This later became ACT Pulsar.
As described in other areas of the site ACT started to distribute the ACT Sirius 1 in 1982 and along with it a set of powerful Pulsar software packages.
ACT realised that not only was there money to made from the hardware and computer supplies but also from software. Pulsar was charged with providing excellent quality software to the Sirius/Victor business users and later ACT Apricot. As there was a considerable software base for these computers this was not a problem. The company provided both their own branded software but also many titles from other well known software houses.
Below are some brochures of the time detailing some of what was on offer to the business community.
A significant set of business intregrated sofware packages that came from ACT Pulsar included PAyroll, Sales Ledger, Purchase Ledger, Noninal Ledger, Analysis, Stock Control and INvoicing all held together by System Implementation software. This package was a complete set of applications for the sucessful running of a business taking care of many aspects of that business. They were designed to interact with one another. It was suggested that this was all you needed to run your business on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and covering all aspects of your business.
