U.S. Robotics
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| Private | |
| Industry | Computer |
| Founded | 1976 (41 years ago) |
| Headquarters | Schaumburg, Illinois |
| Products | Modems, Wired and Wireless Networking, VoIP |
| Owner | UNICOM Global |
| Website | www |
U.S. Robotics Corporation, often called USR, is a company that produces USRobotics computer modems and related products. Its initial marketing was aimed at bulletin board systems, where its high-speed HST protocol made FidoNet transfers much faster, and thus less costly. During the 1990s it became a major consumer brand with its Sportster line. The company had a reputation for high quality and support for the latest communications standards as they emerged, notably in its V.Everything line, released in 1996.
With the reduced usage of analog or voiceband modems in North America in the early 21st century, USR began branching out into new markets. The company purchased Palm, Inc. for its PalmPilot PDA, but was itself purchased by 3Com soon after. 3Com spun off USR again in 2000, keeping Palm and returning USR to the now much smaller modem market. After 2004 the company is formally known as USR. It is one of the few companies left in the modem market today, and now employs about 125 people worldwide.
USR was founded in 1976 in Chicago, Illinois (and later moved to Skokie, Illinois), by a group of entrepreneurs, including Casey Cowell, who served as CEO for most of the company's history, and Paul Collard who designed modems into the mid-1980s. The company name is a reference to the fiction of Isaac Asimov, who is credited with inventing the term robotics. Asimov's robot stories featured a fictional company named U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men. Cowell stated at a popular BBS convention they named the company as an homage to Asimov and because in his science fiction works U.S. Robots eventually became "the biggest company in the universe". (The later 2004 movie I, Robot, which was loosely based on Asimov's works, and set in Chicago, used the name "U.S. Robotics" for the fictional robot manufacturer. The movie's U.S. Robotics corporate logo resembles a former nonfictional USR logo. Following the release of the movie, the company officially changed its name to USR.)
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