Tartan Laboratories
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| Privately Held | |
| Industry | Computer software |
| Fate | Acquired in 1996 |
| Founded | 1981 |
| Founder |
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| Headquarters | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Products | Language compilers |
| Revenue | about $8 million |
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Number of employees
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about 80 |
Tartan Laboratories, Inc., later known as Tartan, Inc., was an American software company founded in 1981 and based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that specialized in language compilers, especially for the Ada programming language. It was based on work initially done at Carnegie Mellon University and gradually shifted from a focus on research and contract work to being more product-oriented. It was sold to Texas Instruments in 1996 with part of it subsequently being acquired by DDC-I in 1998.
Tartan was founded 1981 by Carnegie Mellon University computer science professors and husband and wife William A. Wulf and Anita K. Jones, with the goal of specializing in optimizing compilers. He was chair, president, and CEO while she was vice president of engineering. The professors left the university as part of this action, but still kept a reference to it, as "Tartan" is the name associated with Carnegie Mellon's athletics teams and school newspaper. There was also a third CMU professor who was a founder, John Nestor, a visiting professor who had previously worked at Intermetrics on the finalist "Red" candidate for the Ada language design.
Initial funding for the company was provided by a New York-based venture capital firm, but a second round came from the Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Corporation. The Cleveland-based Morgenthaler Ventures was another early investor, with David Morgenthaler serving on Tartan's board of directors.
The company's offices were initially located in a former industrial warehouse on Melwood Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In 1983 the company hosted a visit by Governor of Pennsylvania Dick Thornburgh as part of a meeting of the Pittsburgh High Technology Council, an organization seeking to help change Pittsburgh from its former reliance on an industrial base of steel production to one that included an emphasis on high-technology.
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