History of Computers - Digital Equipment Corporation

Created by Ribhu Nag

Digital Equipment Corporation was founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957 and built small "modules". DEC is known for their PDP series of computers and their last computer was the PDP-11. They were bought out by Compaq on January 26, 1998, later becoming a part of Hewlett-Packard.

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Overview

Digital Equipment Corporation was a computer manufacturer that, at the time, was the leading vendor of computers, computer systems, software, and PDP among other technology items. Through the 1960's, DEC competed with IBM's mainframe machines using an 18-bit word. It's first success was the PDP-8, sold for approximately $16,000, a relatively cheap price for the handiness of the computer. Soon after the PDP-8 came the PDP-11, the last of the popular machines made by DEC. DEC came out with a 32 bit model known as the super mini, which led to them basically monopolizing the market as they took over most of the mini-computer market. In the 1980's, DEC was doing very well as they were employing upwards of 100,000 people and were becoming the "top of the food chain" in the computer industry. Things started going downhill in the 1990's, however, as layoffs began with sales plummeting. After many tries at coming back, they would be bought out by Compaq.

Significance

Digital Equipment Corporation was one of the leading companies to sell minicomputers. In 1964, DEC came out with what is known to be the first minicomputer, named the PDP-8. The PDP-8 was sold in bunches and was used for a specific need. The PDP-8 did only have a limited instruction set and did not have a memory protection system for the hardware. They built the VAX series in 1976, an extension of the PDP-11 that was 32 bits. PDP-11 was very important as it was the first machine to run Bell Lab's UNIX system, used by most educational institutions. The PDP-11 also allowed for time-sharing as it had a 64K address space. Most of DEC’s machines were used for laboratory work and built for those purposes. DEC invented the method of clustering, which treated multiple machines and one. This allowed for sharing of pool storage. The printers made by this company have been seen by many as the standard of all dot matrix printers.