1. Kidder Peabody statistics reported in "Consolidations: The Urge to Merge Continues," Progressive Grocer, August, 1989, pp. 104.
2. Dallas Times Herald Continuing Market Survey, Dallas, Texas, 1989
3. "Float" is the time that elapses between when a customer pays for goods and the time the money is removed from his or her bank account. Historically, customers could often count on several days of float - an interest free loan from the retailer. But in 1989 local personal checks usually cleared within 24 hours.
4. "Valued Shopper Card Swells Ukrop's Sales, Supermarket News, May 15, 1989
5. "EPROM" stands for erasable programmable read only memory. This is computer technology that conceptually lies between a computer program and a prewired computer processor. Programmers can program the EPROM chip and it will then perform its function at very high speed (compared with regular software). If the program is incorrect, or if a need arises to change the program, then the chips can, at some inconvenience, be erased and rewritten with the new instructions.
6. "Slots" are recepticals on the personal computer through which it is possible to attach various peripheral devices. Such devices might include printers, modems, hard disks etcetera. Personal computers typically have some limitation regarding the number of such devices that can be attached, due to a limited number of available slots.
7. A gigabyte can be used to store a billion characters of information.
8. "Multi-drop" and "point-to-point" refer to alternative ways that communications lines might be attached to a series of distributed computers. A multi-drop arrangement means that several computers share a single line. Messages are sent down the line, headed by a unique identifier which the addressed computer recognizes as its own. If the line should fail all the computers on the line will be impacted. "Point-to-point" refers to communications where each terminal has its own channel of communications. Generally it is more expensive than multi-drop, though satellites and radio transmission options can sometimes provide economical point-to-point solutions.