|
Back to Articles
As all of you saw in our January Dreamscapes issue, we introduced
the first of a three-part series of articles outlining the history
of Pringle Development and how it became an award winning builder.
Continuing with Part II, George Pringle reflects on the early days
of Pringle Development's success.
 |
|
George O.
Pringle |
|
Pringle Development's first office was about the size of a two bedroom
home, and not a very large one at that. Our data processing department
was located in the garage and used Osborne computers with floppy discs.
Those computers had two floppy disc drives, one of which contained the
operating system and program, and the other contained the data. A weekly
data backup involved a stack of floppy discs a foot or more high. Later
on, a 20 meg hard drive became available, which we used for data
storage. At the time we thought that was all the storage capacity we
would ever need! The operating system we used was called CPI, as I
recall. Along the way, we evolved into tape backup systems. This
eliminated the use of floppy discs (the stack was about two feet high by
this time) and before long, my son switched us to DOS, which has since
morphed into the Windows family of operating systems. Today, of course,
we have batteries of hard disc drives, each holding many gigabytes of
information, and there is no end in sight to the data processing
developments of the future.
Early
on, Pringle Development came up with a special marketing technique.
Instead of using local newspaper and television advertising (there was
no Internet or email in those days), we developed a free booklet
entitled "How to Buy Your Home in Florida." This booklet served the dual
purpose of providing useful information to our customers while helping
us determine who might be interested in purchasing a home in Florida. We
continue to offer the booklet to this day. Please watch for more of this
three-part series.
Back to Articles |
