Intergraph workstations once laid out the piping, steel and cable trays of American power plants, and then the company that built them stopped making computers altogether. This is the story of why the machine vanished while the software it ran is still sold today.

From Huntsville, Alabama, Intergraph sold turnkey systems: twin screens above a wide digitizer table, a cursor puck, and a shared Digital VAX in a cold room behind the wall. Utilities and firms like Bechtel used them to cut hours of drafting down to minutes. By 1991 revenue passed one billion dollars, most of it from selling hardware with the software inside.

You will learn:
• How the IGDS software and the dual-screen station worked
• Why Intergraph built its own Clipper processor
• How the Plant Design System checked a pipe against a steel beam
• Why moving to Windows NT saved the software and sank the workstation
• What the Intel lawsuit really changed, and what it did not
• How the plant design business survived under Hexagon

If you ever worked a digitizer table under two glowing screens, you may remember how a single puck click placed a pipe hanger. Share what you remember in the comments.

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