Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corp., died at 84 | Hacker News Reader

Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corp., died at 84

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When I was a Junior at MIT in 1975, working in the Large Systems Group (the PDP-10) in Marlboro as a summer co-op student, I asked some of the DEC old-timers what would happen if I invited Ken Olsen over to my little summer sublet in Marlboro. They said, "ask him".

I figured they were playing a trick on a lowly co-op, but I figured, what the heck. So I invited him to stop by that coming Sunday afternoon. And he accepted!

The ever-gracious Ken Olson came to my place, and chatted with about a dozen fellow MIT DEC co-op students, and another perhaps dozen regular employees at the Marlboro facility. We were all awe-struck, but somehow we managed to ask him about whether he thought IBM were our competition (he didn't think so, because DEC and IBM served different markets), and what he thought of these little microcomputers, like the Altair 8800 that was about to be announced (he didn't think they were very useful, poor h/w and non-existent software). What about putting one of our PDP-10s on a board, like the recently-introduced LSI-11 did for the PDP-11? (Contact Gordon Bell and ask him about that.) And much more like that.

I distinctly remember he sat in a chair while we accolites sat on the floor at his feet.

At the time, the PDP-11 and especially the PDP-11/45 was quite the machine - unix had recently been ported to it with great success, and I had used it in several of my courses. I of course had one of those "comic book" PDP-11/45 manuals that had been well-thumbed. Would Ken autograph it for me? And of course the ever-gracious Ken Olson signed it just below his signature on the front page of the manual.

What a tremendously giving, gracious, friendly, smart, helpful man. His influence on this industry is deep and wide. He remains my role model. He'll be sorely missed.

That is a great story. Thank you for sharing!

This news really hits me hard. Ken was a great entrepreneur and a friend to my family. He hired my father (Dick Hustvedt) out of Xerox to come join DEC in the early 70's. Ken tapped my dad for VMS.

To me Ken was always one of those grandpa mentor types quick to engage and share his business wit. I remember how the DEC hackers would always talk about how Ken inspired a culture of intrapreneurs within the company, pushing engineers to feel free to create new products and businesses from within rather than acquiring.

It was a different era, but the stories of the guys and gals that stayed up all night coding away at The Mill really made my love for tech. There was a passion for what they did, not for the payday.

DEC was also one of the first startups funded by the modern idea of VCs.

Given the age survey posted a little while ago, most HN members have no particular reason to note this. But for me, one by one the pioneers that pulled me into the world of computers are dying--- I will miss them.

Even though that Digital Equipment Corporation is before my time I have read up on the history of computers (New hackers dictionary and various other sources) and I can recognize the importance of this pioneer.

Actually its funny you mention that. I have a feeling given the relative youth of the field of CS (and CE), even those of us who are relative newbies like myself (by which I mean when and under what circumstances I got into the field) still appreciate the work of such pioneers, even though it is as a result of reading up about them rather than actually working directly with them (or their contributions). Another name that comes to mind is Kildall! Every time I read about them, a certain nostalgic sadness fills me, even though I have never used a DEC or CP/M (respectively).

Small nitpick: CP/M came out of Digital Research (or, more accurately, DR formed around it), not Digital Equipment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall

Sorry about the confusion. I actually was referring to CP/M in reference to Gary, not DEC. Should have worded it better!

A short video, produced by Gordon College, offers a short history of Ken Olsen's impact and legacy. If not for DEC, the world of computing as we know it would not exist. The video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6We6VDtyHY More about Ken Olsen, and a quote from Bill Gates, can be found here: http://www.gordon.edu/kenolsen

Thank you for the video.

My first job was at DEC (software engineer in Germany). I remember we were a team of 20 (or so) time sharing single VAX, each of us on 40x25 DEC terminal using LSE (language sensitive editor).

In retrospect it is amazing how far ahead of its time DEC often was: The first 64 bit processor (DEC alpha), the first search engine (Altavista), etc; and how little came of it in the end.

That all is now over 20 years ago, and I still look fondly back to that time, and I am still in contact with my former colleagues.

It's a shame that every time I mention DEC to anyone, very few of them know what I am talking about...

I enjoyed using VAX/VMS and admire DEC's contributions to modern ComSci.

You will be missed!

I loved using VAX! RIT had one and I managed an account through a friend. I don't remember what shell environment it had on it, but there were plenty of scripts being passed down from one class to another.

We basically had foursquare on the VAX system, since you could keep track of your friends and the systems knew which lab you last logged into.

If it was VAX/VMS, then the shell environment was DCL-- DEC Control Language. Oh, the things I used to get up to in there...

It's amazing - not that long ago (or so it seems) developers, at least in academic circles, were being warned not to assume that "all the world's a VAX".

I remember the day they announced their acquisition by Compaq. Sad, sad day.

American Research and Development, the grand-daddy of Venture Capital in the United States, invested $77,000 for 77% of DEC in 1957 (that's roughly $598K in 2010 dollars). When it went public in 1971, ARD's shares were valued at $355 million (about $1.9 billion in 2010 dollars). This one investment was responsible for over half the lifetime performance of ARD's portfolio over the decades before it was sold to Textron.

See: http://books.google.com/books?id=tDOVY3ek-UEC&lpg=PA20&#...

I grew up using a Intel 486-powered DEC workstation. DEC's legendary machines were behind them by that point, but I still have plenty of nostalgia for that computer. 16MB of RAM was a lot of memory in 1993.

Alpha workstations were pretty awesome just then - although we used to buy the cheap ones with NT and install linux.

Ah yes, forgot about the Alpha port of NT. It's a little-known fact that Windows NT ran on non-Intel architectures: besides the Alpha version, there were MIPS and PowerPC ports.

Due to some sort of internal Dec sales war you could buy the same hardware running VMS($$$$),Ultrix($$$),or NT($) - we bought NT and wiped the machines then installed Linux.

They gave you Sparc ultra performance for 1/2 the price.

The Alphas we had (lovely boxes - especially the mid range "server" we had) were running OSF/1 rather than Ultrix - was that yet another option?

OSF/1 morphed into Digital Unix and then into Tru64. I have seen Alpha boxes running NT, Linux and OpenVMS.

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