Editing Thinking Machines Corporation (section)

==Business history==
[[File:Simv.jpg|right|thumbnail|100px|Advertisement poster at the [[National Cryptologic Museum]]]]
In May 1985, Thinking Machines became the third company to [[List of the oldest currently-registered Internet domain names|register]] a [[.com]] [[domain name]] (think.com).  The company became profitable in 1989, in part because of its contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ([[DARPA]]).<ref>{{cite news |title=U.S. Awards Computer Contract |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/29/business/us-awards-computer-contract.html |work=New York Times |date=29 November 1989 |last1=Markoff |first1=John }}</ref>  The next year, they sold $65 million (USD) worth of hardware and software, making them the market leader in parallel supercomputers. Thinking Machines' primary supercomputer competitor was [[Cray Research]].  Other [[parallel computing]] competitors included [[nCUBE]], nearby [[Kendall Square Research]], and [[MasPar]], which made a computer similar to the CM-2, and [[Meiko Scientific]], whose CS-2 was similar to the CM-5.  In 1991, DARPA and the [[United States Department of Energy]] reduced their purchases amid criticism they were unfairly favoring Thinking Machines at the expense of [[Cray]], [[nCUBE]], and [[MasPar]].  Tightening export laws also prevented the most powerful Connection Machines from being exported. By 1992, the company was losing money, and CEO [[Sheryl Handler]] was forced out.

In August 1994, Thinking Machines filed for [[Chapter 11]] bankruptcy. The hardware portion of the company was purchased by [[Sun Microsystems]], and TMC re-emerged as a small software company specializing in parallel software tools for commodity clusters and [[data mining]] software for its installed base and former competitors' parallel supercomputers. In December 1996, the parallel software development section was also acquired by [[Sun Microsystems]].

Thinking Machines continued as a pure data mining company until it was acquired in 1999 by [[Oracle Corporation]]. Oracle later acquired Sun Microsystems, thus re-uniting much of Thinking Machines' intellectual property.

The program ''[[wide area information server]]'' (WAIS), developed at Thinking Machines by [[Brewster Kahle]], would later be influential in starting the [[Internet Archive]] and associated projects, including the [[Rosetta Project]] as part of Danny Hillis' [[Clock of the Long Now]].

Architect [[Greg Papadopoulos]] later became Sun Microsystems's [[chief technology officer]] (CTO).