COMMERCIAL GREENHOUSE COMPUTERSYSTEMS: INVENTARISATION OF IMPLEMENTED RESEARCH, CARRIED OUT BY COMMERCIAL FIRMS

This initial appearance on this fair was a maiden appearance in the Netherlands for computers in the field of climatcontrol in greenhouses; not only the practical grower, but also researchers in the area of climatcontrol ware surprised by this effort. Though preliminary research efforts had been made, in order to start the development of climatcontrol computersystems on several institutes, up to that moment nothing had been realised yet. The biggest part of the research was still aimed at the analog control systems.

Seventeen separate electronic firms were producing and selling analog controllers at that moment for the greenhouse control market, and these analog controllers were demanding a lot of attention.

However, the computersystems shown on the growers fair, appeared to be the demonstration models of the ones that ultimately would be taken into production.

The interest shown by the practical growers in applying computercontrol-systems, was of such an extend, that the selling rate of the first systems induced the climatcontrol competitors on the fair to start immediately their research and development of digital climatcontrolcomputers.

For some of the research institutions this event was the immediate cause to a new orientation in this field of research, especially concerning their investments in buying instruments.

Within two years after this memorable fair, systems from five separate producers, were in production and were sold to the growers.

Now, more than five years afterwards, we can count up to eleven firms selling their systems to growers in a severe competition; nine of them are dutch firms and two of them are from german origin. The hardware

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