Digital Equipment Corporation: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 07:43, 14 January 2016

Digital Equipment Corporation, better known either by its initials, DEC or simply as "Digital", was a pioneering minicomputer manufacturer based in the USA. It started out manufacturing magnetic core memories in 1957 and introduced one of the first minicomputers sold in the USA in the early 1960's, and in the 1970's 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 70's the company was largest private employer in their home state of Massachusetts.

The company started to lose their way in the latter half of the 1980's 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 HP in 2002.

Known products

Personnel

Ken Olson (Founder & CEO)
Harlan Anderson (Founder)
David H. Ahl (DEC educational division, designed the company's first PC in the early 70's(never marketed))

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 [[Image:dec-logo.png|250px|right]]
-Digital Equipment Corporation, better known either by its initials, '''DEC''' or simply as "Digital", was a pioneering minicomputer manufacturer based in the USA. It started out manufacturing magnetic core memories in the 50's and introduced one of the first minicomputers sold in the USA in the 1960's and in the 1970's 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 70's the company was largest private employer in their home state of Massachusetts.
+Digital Equipment Corporation, better known either by its initials, '''DEC''' or simply as "Digital", was a pioneering minicomputer manufacturer based in the USA. It started out manufacturing magnetic core memories in 1957 and introduced one of the first minicomputers sold in the USA in the early 1960's, and in the 1970's 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 70's the company was largest private employer in their home state of Massachusetts.
-The company started to lose their way in the latter half of the 1980's and [[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 [[HP]] in 2002.
+The company started to lose their way in the latter half of the 1980's 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 [[HP]] in 2002.
 ==Known products==