[gond]

I am still irritated by the name of the company.

What is the reasoning behind these schemes? The hope that bits of the properties of legendary companies will rub off onto the new venture?

As if naming the next best venture PARC will inevitably create a breakthrough in networking just by the arrangement of four letters.

[ricardobeat]

Are you talking about the “Thinking Machines” company that shut down in 1994? Took me some digging to figure it out, doesn’t seem well-known enough to be the reason - it’s just a nice (and relatively obvious) name.

[gond]

Yes. Danny Hillis’ Thinking Machines Corporation, an AI company which created its own massive parallel processing supercomputer hardware.

“We are building a machine that will be proud of us” was their corporate motto. And that was in 1983.

One of those Machines is on view at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Back then, they could be ordered in “Darth Vader Black”, no kidding here. You can also see a couple of them (the CM-5) as the stereotypical supercomputer in the original Jurassic Park.

More here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Corporatio...

[kkylin]

And in the original Jurassic Park! https://www.google.com/search?q=jurassic+park+cm-5

[kkylin]

[addendum: posted this too quickly & didn't see it in the comment above. duh.]

[ewoodrich]

It may not be a household name like Apple or Microsoft but its flagship product the Connection Machine is somewhat iconic in (super)computing history. The physical design of the machine is cool and unforgettable looking, plus recurring HN favorite Richard Feynman contributed to the original architecture.

[random3]

The thinking is free marketing and the same reason trademarks were invented