Wilson Trucking Co.) on W. Main Street across New Hope Road from the Purple Foot restaurant in Waynesboro. The new printer was to become Terminet 8000, printing 8000 lines per minute. At that time printers were operating at 300 to 600 lines per minute and were producing 6 to 9 copies (plies). In order for this new single-ply technology to compete, a speed at least ten times 600 lines per minute was adopted. The technology incorporated in it was so far ahead of its time that Product Planning and Marketing were unable to build a market for it --- and it died aborning. Relays & High-Speed Impact Printers - The Creation of Genicom Corporation Of the many product lines that existed in Waynesboro, two confounded the strategic planning of GE corporate management. For nearly 20 years it had predicted the perennial demise of the relay business. Likewise, in the early 1980s, as the computer businesses had been sold, it didn't see the long-term viability of high-speed impact printers. At that time the darlings of the family became unwanted children and their future was deemed uncertain, as they didn't fit anywhere in the corporate business structure. In 1981, GE made preparations to sell both the relay and the printer businesses and the management-buyout was completed in October 1983. The announcement was made to the employees on October 21. GE financed a small portion of the buyout price. A new company was formed with the name Genicom Corporation. This new venture included both relays and printers but the emphasis was to exploit the market for the printer business under the direction of Curtis Powell as CEO. Genicom ultimately sold the relay business to a firm, CII Technology, a group of venture capitalists that were combining all such manufacturers into one operation in North Carolina.. The sale was made in the early 1990s. The Growth & Evolution of Genicom Corporation Genicom was quite successful in its early operations, and its stock went public in 1987–8. However, as the impact printer technology began to be replaced by the laser print engine and the ink jet technology, it became more and more difficult to compete as those technologies were almost completely patented by others, and a license was required to build them. Early on, Genicom realized that just manufacturing and selling printers was not enough. It started a very successful service business a.k.a. Enterprising Service