STSC

Scientific Time Sharing Corporation (STSC), later Manugistics Group, was the developer of APL*PLUS and NARS. Founded in 1969, the company initially developed APL*PLUS together with I.P. Sharp Associates (IPSA), and offered time sharing service to the United States while IPSA sold to Canada. The products were later split, with IPSA renaming its version to SHARP APL. STSC's APL business was sold to form APL2000 in 1995, and is now the basis of APL+Win and APL64.

STSC was founded in 1969 in Bethesda, Maryland by executives Dan Dyer and Burton Gray, along with implementers Phil Abrams, Larry Breed, and Al Rose; Dan Dyer received the Iverson Award together with Ian Sharp in 1985. Other employees include Bob Smith, who joined in 1971, and Brian Becker.

STSC and IPSA first made APL*PLUS available in 1970. The implementation was derived from APL\360 but added new features such as filesystem support. Around 1976, the languages offered by the two companies began to diverge, and IPSA renamed theirs to SHARP APL. In 1981, STSC published NARS, an experimental extension of APL*PLUS developed by Bob Smith and the first major language to use the nested array model. Many of its features would be incorporated in APL*PLUS II on its release in 1989.

STSC began offering in-house versions of APL as cheaper computers rapidly made time-sharing less profitable in the 1980s. These included APL*Plus/PC, for IBM personal computers, APL*Plus/Unix, and APL*Plus/386, for Intel computers.

The company and its APL assets underwent several changes in name and ownership over the years. In 1979 its name was changed from Scientific Time Sharing Corporation to STSC, Inc., in 1982 it was acquired by Contental Telecom, Inc. In 1992 it was renamed Manugistics Group, Inc. In 1995, the APL product line was sold to Financial Reporting Software, which was soon renamed LEX2000, Inc., with Manugistics retaining other assets such as supply chain software. This deal formed the subsidiary APL2000, which took over development of the APL*PLUS family.