Bill Gates attended the dedication of Dayton History’s Mark and Paula Hurd NCR Archive Center, bringing added attention to a project meant to protect decades of NCR corporate history. The Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist was also identified as one of the center’s donors.
Gates said NCR and Microsoft had an early business connection, including work on a data-entry terminal in Microsoft’s early years. He also noted that the companies later collaborated on the development of Windows NT Server when it was still starting in 1992.
A connection that stretches back decades
Gates recalled visiting Dayton several times and said he once stayed in the Wright brothers’ home during one of those trips. That detail reflected the long-running ties between his company and a city that played an important role in NCR’s history.
The archive center also connects to that corporate history through Teradata, which NCR acquired after AT&T Corporation acquired NCR. Microsoft and NCR Teradata later worked together in 1998 on data warehousing and e-commerce software before NCR and Teradata separated in the early 2000s.
Support for preserving NCR’s records
The Mark and Paula Hurd NCR Archive Center received its lead gift from Paula Hurd in honor of her late husband, Mark Hurd, who served as CEO of NCR Corporation. Before becoming president and CEO, Mark Hurd led NCR’s Teradata division, while Paula Hurd worked at NCR for nearly two decades in sales and service roles.
At the dedication, Paula Hurd said, “In 1979, Microsoft received one of its largest orders from NCR,” adding that Gates “made a very generous donation to the center.” The comment underscored the shared history that helped bring several major supporters to the project.
What the archive center will hold
The center will preserve many of the two-dimensional materials tied to NCR’s past, including engineering drawings, blueprints, photographs, and corporate records. Dayton History says the collection also includes more than 300 scrapbooks that contain some of those documents.
The archive center is located in the former Neil’s Heritage House building at 2323 W. Schantz Ave. in Dayton. It is not currently open to the public, but the dedication marked a formal step in safeguarding materials tied to one of Dayton’s most influential companies.
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