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Tuesday, December 1, 2009
DEC may be gone, but it's not forgotten
By Alan R. Earls, Special to Mass High Tech
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Flash Slideshow: Mass High Tech All-Stars Thought Leadership Roundtable
Launched more than 50 years ago and dominant in the Massachusetts economy from the 1970s into the 1990s, Digital Equipment Corp. blazed a technology trail that others followed. And as shown by three recent events, the tale isn’t over.
For one thing, the story of DEC and its people, including Ken Olsen, its co-founder and long-time leader, is the subject of a new documentary under development with support from the Olsen family. Attendees at the most recent DEC Connect event for company alumni, recently held in Stow, got to see a 10-minute preview, replete with historic images and interviews with company veterans. In addition, two new books have DEC connections: Gordon Bell, a long-time DEC technical leader, and Harlan Anderson, who cofounded the company with Olsen, have published or are about to publish new titles.
According to Dan Tymann, vice president for the advancement of science and technology at Gordon College in Wenham, where Olsen has been a long-time board member and major donor, the video Digital Man Digital World will be completed by the end of August 2010. The finished product is expected to run between 45 and 60 minutes in length and will attempt to put the company’s history into context. It is expected to detail DEC’s role in popularizing interactive computing and introducing affordable minicomputers, bridging the era of the “electronic brains” that were once accessible only to a handful of specialists in the 1950s to contemporary society, in which computing has become nearly ubiquitous.
Production and distribution is in the hands of WFYI, the Indianapolis-based PBS affiliate, and TeleVerse Productions. According to Tymann, the project was delayed by the sudden death of its original producer. “I led the effort to find a new producer and in some ways played producer myself for a few months,” said Tymann. For those anxious to view the documentary, the wait may be longer still. “We feel confident that WGBH would bring this to PBS for a first or second tier delivery. If so, I don’t think we’ll see this on air until January 2011 at the earliest,” said Tymann.
On the other hand, the Gordon Bell and Harlan Anderson books are available now. Bell, who worked at the company from the 1960s into the 1980s, was responsible for developing various mini- and mainframe computers and, in particular, the highly successful VAX line. Later, he landed at Microsoft, where he still works as a researcher on topics such as telepresence. His book, “Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything (Dutton, 2009),” written with fellow Microsoft researcher Jim Gemmell, is partly the result of an experiment, MyLifeBits, in which Bell has made himself the primary subject, focused on an obsessive recording of every aspect of a life. The effort’s motto is “record everything, throw away nothing.” “Total Recall,” describes some of these experiments and tries to put them in the context of computing (harking back to Vannevar Bush and his influential vision of the Memex machine) and the cultural roles of story teller and bard, which were once reserved for specialists but now, thanks to high tech tools, are open to anyone. The authors even offer some tips for DIYers who want to enter the world of total recall.
Incidentally, elements of Bell’s creed of obsessive collecting can be viewed at his Microsoft web site, which features many links to items relevant to DEC history.
While Bell’s book and current research is only peripherally tied to his years as the technology leader of DEC, Harlan Anderson’s book, “Learn, Earn & Return,” published by Locust Press (see ordering information), is much more closely linked to the world that Olsen built.
Long the nearly invisible partner in the original DEC duo, Anderson went on to a kind of “futurist” role, not unlike Bell’s current job, but at Time Inc., which he joined in the mid-1960s after being squeezed out of DEC. Without the memory tools that equip Bell, Anderson chronicles his Midwestern roots, along with later forays into education and venture investing. While he declares in his preface that his primary goal is to leave a life story for his descendants to contemplate (he expresses regrets about how little he knows of his own grandparents), there is no doubt many others who will find this account of a life lived in the midst of business, technical and social change to be interesting and even inspiring. In particular, Anderson serves up some sharp analyses of the policies and personalities that may have contributed to the demise of Digital. And such cautionary tales are always relevant reading.
In 1957, Harlan Anderson co-founded Digital Equipment Corp. with Ken Olsen, planning to make the world’s first computer that companies could afford to buy. The venture-capital deal they took was one of the earliest for VC pioneer American Research and Development — and its terms, 70 percent ownership for $70,000, set up the first VC “home run.” Anderson recently spoke with MHT writer Galen Moore about the venture capital industry then and now. Check out Mass High Tech's interview with Anderson.
Alan Earls is a freelance writer and former editor of Mass High Tech. He can be reached at alan.earls@comcast.net.
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