From Farmhouse to Hot Air via PCs

From a technological standpoint, there have been some massive changes that have taken place during my life, but just to be clear, airplanes had already been invented by the time I was born. That balloon shown above was what I used to ground myself (pun intended) during the years when I was in the personal computer business.

My mother was born in a farm house (shown above) in southern Illinois that had no electricity or indoor plumbing. The first time my aunt Anne saw her little sister was shortly after she was born and had been wrapped in a blanket and placed on the open door of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen, so that the oven's heat would keep her warm. They didn't get indoor plumbing at the farm until after my first memories begin. I can still remember having to use the outhouse when we'd go there (to my uncle Ed's farm) for our summer vacation. I also remember "helping" my uncle and my dad dig the hole for the first septic tank on that magical old family farm.

We lived in a small town on the outskirts of Chicago, and we had no TV until I was around 12 years old. It only had a very small black and white picture tube, but we thought that it was fantastic! Like many other people, we tried to use a plastic overlay to give a color tint to the actors, but it didn't even come close to working. The TV counsel holding the little screen was a very big, as in HUGE. It was a really big deal when the networks first began broadcasting in color. However, it took our family more than eight years after the introduction of color TV for our family to get one. Eventually, I was able to participate directly in the technological revolution myself.

In late 1979, I founded Dynasty Computer Corporation. Dynasty was the first network marketing company to exclusively carry the then-new home computers. This was a couple of years before IBM brought out their first PC.

Begun in my home with an investment of only a few thousand dollars, our gross sales in our first full calendar year exceeded one million dollars. Paltry by today’s standards, this was big money in 1980, when few people had any reason to want or need a computer in their home. The big names in the world of micro computing back then were VisiCalc, IMSAI, WordStar, Compuserve and the like. The hot chip was the Z-80A, as Intel had only introduced the 8080 a few years earlier.

If, as some say, the birth of the personal computer industry came about in 1980 with the introduction of the Intel chip, then it was an auspicious year indeed in which to begin a computer company. Unfortunately, Dynasty was on the Z-80/CPM bandwagon. None of us early pioneers in the industry could foresee what was about to happen the following year, when IBM introduced its first PC. Even though our company wasn’t one of the survivors of the personal computer revolution, I would not trade that experience for anything. To have been there at the beginning of what has led us to today’s Internet-connected world was worth more than any possible financial rewards that failed to materialize.

During its five years of life, Dynasty received a great deal of notoriety in the press. In addition to receiving a page one mention in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine had this to say about us in their May 23, 1983 edition:

"[Hagerty] also ran a sales training company but wanted to get into the computer business, so he combined his interests and founded Dynasty, a company that emphasizes the “personal” in personal computers. Hagerty, 40, already has 3,000 salespeople selling his machines . . ."

"Dynasty is not to be taken lightly. Hagerty, who flies hot air balloons in his spare time “to get away from high technology,” started the company in 1980. During his first year Dynasty did over $1 million in business, and he is expanding rapidly enough to require a sales force of 5,000 people in 17 states by year’s end."

A few months later, Popular Computing had this to say about Dynasty Computer Corporation:

"The company’s tone is set by President Lawrence Hagerty, a mega-achiever who flies hot-air balloons for recreation and who, along with authors John Naisbitt (Megatrends) and Marilyn Ferguson (The Aquarian Conspiracy), airs his views about ’80s culture and business trends in the prestigious Tarrytown Group. Hagerty’s main achievement at Dynasty has been his aggressive assault on some of the Lone Star State’s most powerful corporations: Texas Instruments, Radio Shack, and even Southwestern Bell."

I must admit, those were exciting times, but the year of that Forbes article, 1983, was to be Dynasty’s final year. Like Osborn Computers, which at one time held the record as the fastest growing company in America, Dynasty succumbed to the tsunami of IBM’s marketing machine and Microsoft's virus-like software. So I got out of the personal computer business and went back to low tech. I qualified for a commercial pilot's license, restricted to flying hot air balloons, and began to make my living selling rides in Iris (N2314H), my beautiful balloon.