[Tig] URSA, the truth behind the name

[peter swinson]

URSA. Where did the name come from?

I have heard many explanations for the name of Rank Cintel's 1990's
Telecine, some amusing, some not!
I was Product Manager during the period of Ursa's development and indeed
during its life. Ah, those were the days.

The naming was down to our team, but you know how it goes, the more people
in the team the more variations are proposed. We had spent many hours
considering various names. The criterion was for a short name. We had,
prior to Ursa, deliberately cranked up the name length of the MKIII to a
point where it was getting ridiculous. If I remember rightly it got to
Enhanced MKIIIC Digiscan 4:2:2 something something!

Anyway, Jack Brittain, then Rank Cintel M.D. got fed up with us not coming
up with a name, so one day he said "we will set a name now, this instant.".
How we asked? "Give me a dictionary, how many letters should the name be?"
We told him at least four but it had to be one syllable. He then said, "OK,
I will flip the pages and the first four letter word I come to will be the
name".  Flip; "URSA". 
As you can tell he flipped the pages from the back end of the dictionary.
And that dear friends is how Ursa was born!   

We then designed a control desk for Ursa, and called it Arcas, Arcas is
related to the URSA MAJOR star constellation. Later we even called a short
lived HD modded URSA, Callisto, again an association with the URSA Major
constellation.

I still think the best name ever for a Cintel Telecine came from our
California office. "Rascal", now whatever happened to that product?

Cheers

Peter