Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was a pioneering minicomputer manufacturer based in Cambridge, MA. It started out manufacturing magnetic core memories in 1957 and introduced one of the first minicomputers sold in the USA in the early 1960s, and in the 1970s came to dominate that market segment with the PDP line of minicomputers and later with its line of VAX mini and mainframe computers. It was so successful that by the late 70s the company was thr largest private employer of Massachusetts.

The company started to lose their way in the latter half of the 1980s as their attempts to make inroads into the microcomputer market had all failed, and the company had only a limited foothold in the UNIX workstation market, and finally IBM's introduction of the AS/400 minicomputer lineup that basically stole DEC's bread and butter minicomputer business, was a shock that the company never recovered from. In 1998 it was taken over by Compaq who in turn were taken over by Hewlett Packard in 2002.

Products

 * DECnet
 * Pathworks
 * PCSA for OS/2
 * Ultrix
 * VMS

Personnel

 * Ken Olson (Founder & CEO)
 * Harlan Anderson (Founder)
 * David H. Ahl (Education Product Line Manager, designed the company's first PC in the early 70s (never marketed))