Electronics Industry Honors Innovators With New Awards

The American Electronics Awards gave out its first awards Thursday to innovators among Orange County’s high-tech industry.

The winners were picked by a committee of technology experts in the trade group’s Orange County Council from a field of 35 entrants to acknowledge one of Orange County’s fastest-growing industries.

And the winners are:

* Interplay Productions Inc. in Irvine won for the best multimedia software--a computer program that exploits sound, video, text and animation--for its Castles II, a medieval warfare simulation game.

* Hughes Aircraft Co. in Fullerton won best defense conversion project for an automatic train control system, an experiment that uses military technology to better control subway train networks.

* PairGain Technologies Inc. in Cerritos won for best telecommunications technology for its products that enable computer data to travel faster through standard telephone lines.

* Pinnacle Micro Inc. in Irvine won for its Orray computer storage system, which uses optical technology--the same kind as in music compact disks--to store a library of computer data.

* Unisys Corp.’s Orange County division in Mission Viejo won a best computer award for a business computer that uses so-called gallium arsenide technology, a blend of materials that rivals silicon for use in computer chips.

* Digitalk Inc. in Santa Ana won best software for PARTS Workbench, a program that makes it easier for software designers to create programs.

Carmelo Santoro, chief executive of Platinum Software Corp. in Irvine, gave out the awards at the first Innovation Awards Ceremony of the AEA’s Orange County Council. The event took place at the Center Club in Costa Mesa.