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Guide to the Digital Equipment Corporation records
X2675.2004
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Title: Digital Equipment Corporation records
Identifier/Call Number: X2675.2004
Contributing Institution: Computer History Museum
Language of Material: English
Physical Description: 1,239 Linear feet,611 record cartons, 357 manuscript
boxes, 56 newspaper boxes, 169 periodical boxes, and 150 other box
types
Date (bulk): Bulk, 1957-1998
Date (inclusive): 1947-2002
Abstract: The Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) records
comprise DEC's corporate archives, with material dating from 1947 to 2002. The bulk
of the collection was collected and created during the company's years of operation
from 1957 to 1998. DEC, founded by engineers Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson, was one
of the largest and most successful computer companies in the industry's history.
Widely recognized for its PDP and VAX minicomputer product lines, by 1988 DEC was
second only to IBM as the world's largest computer company. This collection holds
the papers of DEC's executives, engineers, and personnel -- including the personal
collections of founders Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson. Also included are DEC's
administrative records and material relating to product development and engineering,
with committee meeting minutes, correspondence, internal newsletters, product
proposals, and engineering drawings. Most of DEC's publications, such as manuals,
promotional and sales material, and technical reports, are represented in this
collection as well. Lastly, DEC's large corporate photo library and archive remains
intact as a part of this collection, holding tens of thousands of original product
photographs, portraits of DEC personnel, images showing client applications of DEC
products, brochures, and historical files with visual documentation of the company's
beginnings and milestones. In 1998, DEC was acquired by Compaq, ending its run as a
company, though many of its groundbreaking technologies went on to sell under
different branding and influence subsequent directions of computing and its
industries.
Languages: The collection is primarily in English, with
small amounts of material in Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese,
Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian.
creator: Digital Equipment
Corporation.
The collection is open for research.
The Computer History Museum (CHM) can only claim physical ownership of the
collection. Users are responsible for satisfying any claims of the copyright holder.
Requests for copying and permission to publish, quote, or reproduce any portion of
the Computer History Museum's collection must be obtained jointly from both the
copyright holder (if applicable) and the Computer History Museum as owner of the
material.
[Identification of Item], [Date], Digital Equipment Corporation records, Lot [#], Box
[#], Folder [#], Catalog [#], Computer History Museum.
Note: For this collection the lot number citation will either be X2675.2004,
X3149.2005, or X7042.2014.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The majority of this collection was a gift of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) in
2004 (X2675.2004). Smaller parts of the collection came from DEC employees Timothe
Litt in 2005 (X3149.2005) and Richard Best in 2011 (X7042.2014).
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was one of the largest and most profitable
computer companies in the world, initially known for its modules, then for its PDP
and VAX families of computers, and finally for the Alpha microprocessor.
DEC was founded in Maynard, Massachusetts, by engineers Ken Olsen and Harlan
Anderson, who had previously worked together at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. It
operated from 1957 to 1998. Olsen and Anderson started the company with financial
backing from Georges Doriot, one of the United States' first venture capitalists,
and DEC was the first successful venture-backed computer company. Olsen served as
DEC's president until 1992 and ran the company with a complicated decentralized
management style that pitted product groups against each other for corporate
resources. Anderson served as DEC's executive vice president until he was forced out
in 1966 after a falling out with Olsen over the direction of the company.
At the time of DEC's founding, computers were large, complicated to use, and
expensive. Olsen and Anderson wanted to produce alternatives to those large
mainframes: computers that were powerful and had real-time interactivity, but were
smaller, easier to use, and much more affordable. Mindful that investors were not
backing computer companies at the time, their business plan was divided into two
phases that de-emphasized computer production. Phase one focused on the manufacture
and sale of electronic modules to be used in test and prototyping environments;
phase two focused on using those modules in the design of a fully interactive
computer system. Ultimately, DEC's focus would be on minicomputers for laboratory,
business, and research use customized for clients and including long-term service
and technical support contracts with DEC. For its first two years, DEC developed its
successful module business. In 1959, DEC's first minicomputer, the Programmed Data
Processor, or PDP-1, was designed and produced, with the first unit sold in 1960. It
was a groundbreaking computer because of its low cost and its fostering of direct
user interaction. DEC released dozens of other PDP-family minicomputers over the
next decade, becoming the market leader in minicomputers by a large margin.
In 1977, DEC introduced a new line of computers -- developed as an extension to the
PDP-11 -- called VAX, or Virtual Address Extension. The incredibly successful and
influential VAX family of computers implemented a 32-bit complex instruction set
computing (CISC) architecture and could run DEC's proprietary operating system
VAX/VMS (later OpenVMS) and UNIX. The VAX family included high performance models,
mainframes, workstations, and MicroVAX minicomputers.
In the early 1980s, DEC began development of a 64-bit reduced instruction set
computing (RISC) architecture to replace VAX. What started as several small RISC
projects at DEC formed into one, PRISM, which was canceled just before completion.
Alpha development started soon after and was based on PRISM concepts. The Alpha
architecture, introduced in 1992, was implemented as a line of microprocessors.
DEC produced other technologies besides computers. It sold a wide variety of
peripherals including magnetic tape and disk memory subsystems, dot matrix printers,
and graphics displays. DEC was also focused on networking and produced several
systems, including Ethernet, DECnet, and VAXclusters. DEC also created the early
search engine AltaVista in 1995. Additionally, DEC produced software that was mostly
proprietary to DEC machines.
As microcomputers emerged in the 1980s, Olsen was resistant to DEC developing them,
believing that most people would not want computers in their homes and that personal
computers (PCs) were mostly used for non-serious purposes, like games. However, in
response to IBM's PC (1981), DEC released several personal computer systems: the
Professional series, DECmate II, Rainbow 100, and VAXmate. DEC's personal computer
efforts did not take off like the IBM PC, however, because of DEC's high prices,
poor marketing, and insistence on making its machines and software proprietary and
thus incompatible with other companies' products and peripherals. DEC's PDP-11 and
VAX systems continued to sell well, however, but competitors were actively working
to create cheaper computers.
In 1988, DEC was second only to IBM as the world's largest computer company. By 1990,
however, the United States was in a recession and DEC's business began to falter.
This loss in revenue was attributable to several factors: There was disagreement
within DEC as to the direction the company should take as workstations, personal
computers, and open computing became more popular. DEC chose to focus on developing
a large mainframe, the VAX 9000, and continued to produce proprietary software and
hardware, missing the opportunity to take advantage of the personal computer and
workstation revolution. Many at DEC felt the VAX 9000 could not recoup its design
and manufacturing costs; this turned out to be true. As DEC concentrated on the VAX
9000, competitors produced workstations that were far less expensive and more
powerful.
As DEC's business waned, there were several attempts within different areas of the
company to boost DEC's viability with new products and technologies. Following DEC's
traditional management model, these different factions were competing against each
other and unfortunately no successful products came from those efforts. In the early
1990s, after steadily falling sales, DEC implemented the first layoffs in the
company's history.
In 1992, the DEC board forced Olsen to resign, appointing Bob Palmer as CEO and
president. Palmer attempted to streamline DEC by reorganizing its structure into a
business unit system, but the company's profits continued to slide, particularly
with its biggest moneymaker, sales and service of VAX systems. Palmer continued
laying off employees and began selling off parts of DEC's business units. Finally,
in 1998, what was left of DEC was sold to Compaq in the largest merger in the
computer industry at that time. Compaq struggled with the merger, and eventually
sold the Alpha microprocessor business to Intel, and then was itself acquired by
Hewlett-Packard in 2002.
Although it ultimately failed as a company, DEC's legacy as a pioneer in computer
technology lives on. HP continues to sell products derived from DEC technology, such
as OpenVMS, under its own branding.
Scope and Content of the Collection
The Digital Equipment Corporation records are made up of material created and
collected at the company during its active years from 1957 to 1998. The collection
also contains material created prior to DEC's founding, dating as early as 1947, and
material from the organizations involved in DEC's final mergers and acquisitions
spanning as late as 2002.
The first seven series of the collection consist of smaller, personal collections of
DEC's founders, executives, engineers, and other staff. These collections of
individuals' papers were donated intact to the Computer History Museum within the
larger original donation. Most of these individuals' collections were grouped into
series based on different types of careers at DEC. “Series 1, Executives' papers”
contain the papers of DEC's founders, presidents, executive vice presidents, and/or
executives in charge of an entire branch of DEC's operations. Series 1 holds the
papers of DEC's two founders, Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson, which include some of
the earliest records of the collection from influencing organizations such as MIT's
Lincoln Laboratory.
“Series 2, Engineers' papers” group together engineers and technical specialists. Two
of the largest subseries under Series 2 are the papers of Mike Uhler and Timothe
Litt, who were both senior consulting engineers at DEC. Litt's collection of papers
is especially large, partly due to his role in facilitating the transfer of portions
of the Digital Equipment Corporation records (Lot X2675.2004) and a smaller donation
of material (Lot X3149.2005) focusing on the KL10 model of DEC's PDP-10 mainframe
computer family. The last category of personal collections is grouped under “Series
3, Product managers' papers.” Series 3 contains the papers of DEC's “group managers”
and “product line managers” who steered product development and employee management
for specific product lines. Some of the individuals with personal collections were
not grouped into the initial three series, due to the natures of their careers at
DEC not fitting into these series' categories. These individuals have their own
series.
Following the papers of individual staff are DEC's administrative records, containing
internal newsletters, the minutes and correspondence of internal committees,
manufacturing plant records, and records pertaining to personnel and corporate
policies. Since the personal collections of the preceding series were kept intact,
much of the contents of those series relate to the material in “Series 9,
Administrative records.” For example, there are records from DEC's Operations
Committee and Executive Committee held in both the administrative records series and
the Ken Olsen papers in Series 1.
Another large body of internal documentation is contained in “Series 10, Product
lifecycle records,” which includes product proposals, project updates, pricing and
manufacturing plans, performance summaries, specifications, field maintenance
documentation, and engineering drawings for various product lines at DEC.
Other parts of the collection were donated and processed as units of a specific
department or group. These include “Series 11, Public Relations department records,”
“Series 12, Corporate Contributions department records,” and “Series 13, DECUS
records.” This collection also contains large amounts of DEC publications, which are
organized into series based on their publication types. These series include
promotional and sales material, technical newsletters and journals, manuals, and
technical reports. DEC had previously organized some of these publications into
lending libraries for employees and other users -- notably with its large
collections of manuals and technical reports.
One other major part of this collection comprises the still images and documentation
of the Digital Equipment Corporation Photo Library and Archive. The photo library
holds tens of thousands of original slides, transparencies, prints, negatives, and
proof sheets spanning the company's active years from 1957 to 1998. These images
depict client applications of DEC products, brochures and promotional material,
portraits of DEC pioneers, and historical files of images documenting the company's
early history and achievement milestones, along with histories of Maynard,
Massachusetts and the “Maynard Mill” (DEC's headquarters). Lastly, this collection
contains the audiovisual holdings--primarily videotapes--of DEC's regional libraries
from various facilities, including video recordings of talks and meetings from the
DEC Systems Research Center (SRC) in Palo Alto, California.
The collection is arranged into 22 series:
Series 1, Executives' papers, 1947-1995, bulk 1960-1994
Series 2, Engineers' papers, 1951-2002, bulk 1970-1998
Series 3, Product managers' papers, 1966-1997
Series 4, Sam Fuller corporate research records, 1976-1997
Series 5, Judy Hall TOPS-20 and Jupiter records, 1974-1989
Series 6, Edward McDonough Far East Manufacturing Group records, 1976-1985
Series 7, Ralph Dormitzer America's Cup records, 1982-1992
Series 8, Oral history collection, 1978-1993, bulk 1987-1991
Series 9, Administrative records, 1958-1998, bulk 1970-1992
Series 10, Product lifecycle records, 1952-1990
Series 11, Public Relations department records, 1957-1995, bulk 1973-1993
Series 12, Corporate Contributions department records, 1981-1994
Series 13, DECUS records, 1962-1993
Series 14, Promotional and sales material, 1960-2000
Series 15, Technical newsletters and journals, 1963-1998, bulk 1980-1998
Series 16, Manuals, 1960-1999, bulk 1962-1991
Series 17, Technical reports, 1971-1996, bulk 1980-1993
Series 18, Exhibit records, circa 1950-1988, bulk 1988
Series 19, Non-DEC publications, 1963-1998
Series 20, Photo library documentation, 1957-2002
Series 21, Still images, 1956-1998
Series 22, Moving images, 1979-2002
Physical objects were separated from the main collection. To view catalog records for
separated material search the CHM catalog at
http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/ .
Bob Supnik papers, Lot X3339.2006.
Charles A. Jortberg collection, Lot X2381.2002.
Collection of Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1 Computer Materials, Lot
X3602.2006.
Company Collection of Computing Manuals and Marketing Materials, Lot X3067.2005.
Harlan Anderson PDP Documents, Lot X3575.2006.
Related Collections at Other Repositories
Digital Equipment Computer Users Society Proceedings and Publications (CBI 150),
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Ken Olsen Personal Archives, Ken Olsen Science Center, Gordon College.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Anderson, Harlan E.
Digital Equipment Corporation.
Olsen, Kenneth H.
DEC microcomputers
Maynard (Mass.)
PDP computers
RISC microcomputers
VAX computers