use of a well-known character sequence for this purpose, recommending for "attention", which is prefixed on all commands. The new design, housed in an extruded aluminum case sized to allow a standard desktop telephone to rest on top, was announced in April 1981. It was known simply as the Smartmodem. The Smartmodem was the first modem integrating complete control over the phone line, and that allowed it to be used in exactly the same fashion with any computer. Hayes originally had big plans for the form factor, referring to it as the Hayes Stack and intending to release a range of products that could be stacked beside the computer. In the end, only two non-modem devices were added to the line. The Hayes Stack Chronograph, an external real-time clock and the Transet 1000, a printer buffer and primitive email box. Both of these items' sales were apparently dismal. Early advertising referred to the Smartmodem as the "Hayes Stack Smartmodem", but this naming convention was dropped a short time later. At the time of its introduction, the modem market was fairly small, and competitors generally ignored the Smartmodem. But it was not long before hobbyists were able to combine the Smartmodem with new software to create the first real bulletin board systems (BBSes), which created significant market demand. The market grew rapidly in the mid-1980s, and as the Smartmodem was the only truly "universal" modem on the market, Hayes grew to take over much of the market. By 1982, the company was selling 140,000 modems a year, with sales of $12 million annually (). Heatherington retired from what was then a large company in 1984. Competition The modem market in the 1970s was very simple and stagnant. Modems tended to sell at US$1 per baud. Hayes saw no need to be different—the original Hayes 300 baud modem sold for US$299 retail. At that price point, Hayes could build a "Cadillac of modems", using high-quality components, an extruded aluminum case, and an acrylic front panel with a number of LED indicators. As the modem market expanded, competitors quickly copied the Hayes command set and often the Hayes industrial design as well. To compete with Hayes on price, early competitors manufactured modems using low-cost components that were often unreliable. Hayes quickly gained a reputation for high quality, and for a time held a 50% market share. In 1982, at the Spring Comdex in