Action Computer Enterprise

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Action Computer Enterprise, Inc. (ACE) began in Pasadena, California, in 1978, founded by Herbert L. Siegel, Kwok M. Ong, Wing Chung, and another associate. The company emerged from the early microcomputer era with an unusually ambitious target: putting multiple users to work on one compact computer system.

ACE introduced its Discovery 1600 in April 1979 and later sold the smaller Discovery 500. Its systems combined multiple processors, terminals, operating software, and business-oriented applications—serious shared-computing machinery from the era when a roomful of beige terminals meant progress had arrived.

By 1984, ACE listed its corporate headquarters at 430 North Halstead Street in Pasadena. That year it reported 50 employees; its business also reached China through a Hong Kong sales and service operation. In 1983, ACE added D/NET, a local-area-network system designed to link Discovery 1600 machines in a star configuration.

The company was still promoting multiprocessor transaction-processing systems in 1987, but its run ended in dissolution in 1990. The Discovery name did not conquer the desktop; it belongs instead to that splendidly wild moment when small computer companies believed terminals, processors, and a clever operating system could take on the world.

Our Action Computer Enterprise collection celebrates Pasadena’s multi-user machine dreamers: early-networking nerve, no-nonsense industrial computing, and the wonderfully assertive confidence of calling yourself The Multiprocessing Company.