The Origin of the Data Domain Name

I had received the HP Journal every month for years because we used tons of HP Instrumentation at BNL and ADDS, and as soon as I took the job at IU I bought some HP instruments and a Tektonix scope. I had also been following the development of the HP computer line since its inception, since I knew where they obtained the design, and the designer. (That was the HP 2116 which evolved into the 2215 and 2114 later to lower the costs. In the process they eliminated their computers from consideration for our real-time physics work at BNL, but that is another story.)

HP began to publish articles about their development of newer generation test equipment like logic analyzers and logic probes, etc. They used new terms like "the Time Domain" and "the Frequency Domain", and finally, "the Digital Domain", which caught my eye just when I was searching for a name for the computer store I was about to open.

I didn't want to risk having them question my use of their terms, so I came up with "The Data Domain" and sure enough, so did HP within the same week, I guess. They never questioned my use of the term as my store name (surprise, surprise), but I thought it might be why Woz told me he remembered my store name when I first wrote to him.