General Automation Inc. of Anaheim has sold...

General Automation Inc. of Anaheim has sold National Power Technology Inc., its subsidiary, for an undisclosed amount to a group of private investors headed by the London stock brokerage firm of Raphael, Zorn.

General Automation Chairman Leonard N. Mackenzie, who announced the sale Tuesday, said the purchasers include members of National Power Technology’s top management, including its president, Howard Handler, and its national sales manager, Harold Myers.

Mackenzie said that National Power Technology, which manufactures custom and standard power supplies for a variety of electronic applications, always has been profitable. He said it contributed about $5 million, or 7%, to General Automation’s sales in 1984.

Mackenzie said the sale provides much-needed cash to General Automation, Orange County’s largest independent computer maker, which will use the money from the transaction to increase marketing of its small business computer systems and to decrease bank debt.

In addition, he said, the sale puts National Power Technology, founded in 1980, in the hands of an organization that can better afford to fund the power-supply company’s growth. MSI Data Corp. of Costa Mesa was granted a U.S. patent for its compact computer scanning system that is used to code and record information such as retail prices at point of purchase. The patent for the Datawand Bar Code Scanner, as MSI’s technology is called, covers the scanning unit, related optical communications system and liquid crystal readouts.

Originally introduced in 1983, the Datawand is a self-contained scanning wand that is 7 inches long and 1 inch in diameter. Unlike other wands, it does not need to be connected to larger computers to collect information.