Got the following message from the DEC Alumni LinkedIn administrator:
"It is with great regret that I inform you that our beloved CEO Ken Olsen passed away, yesterday in Indiana, with his immediate family all around him. Ken had been in ill health for the last few months and was in Hospice care. Sad time for their family now, but Ken and Alliki had a wonderful life. It's sad to know that they both have now passed."
Ken Olsen was always good for a quote which completely mis-read the market and/or future conditions ... One of my favourites:
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home. -- Ken Olsen
There were others, but this comes to mind ...
I'm sure he was not alone at the time in thinking that. Things have changes a LOT.
My bet is that a few years from now the AGW deniers will be in denial that they were of that mindset too.
RIP Ken Olsen, sounds like he had a great life.
From another group:
That would be just right. System uptimes from here to eternity...
-- Roberto Waltman
t
in his
Yes, and at the time he was right. There was very little you could use a computer for in the home after you entered all your recipes and your check book was balanced. It took some years and finally the thing called the Internet before computers really became a part of the household. Even Bill Gates got the Internet wrong...
I see little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years.
Rick
At the time he had a system at home for doing some things. Not that there was much software available.
However consider the size and cost of them, very little software came with the computer as even OS was bought separate.
The terminal was often hardcopy floor standing terminals. Video terminals becoming the norm changed offices and then the ability for home systems.
This was at the time arcade video games were just coming in. Most computer systems had special applications written for them by inhouse staff, the number of businesses selling software they or even others wrote was small.
The major things that changed how many people had computers at home, was the advent of the mciro-computer doing more than controlling machinery, when OS like CP/M came about and ROM OS with BASIC. Once the home computers got beyond cassette tape storage and its unreliability, games became available, things started to change.
The next major change was cheap modems BBS, and more SOFTWARE quite a lot being games helped. People connecting to work from terminals and systems from home got more people used to computers at home.
Then with more software available to do more than just games and office spreadsheets, word-processing and clumsy database interfaces more acceptance.
Getting computers in simplest forms below the $1000 barrier and every step downwards ment more would be able to buy them.
The final major boom was getting 'complete' system, with software modem and printer below the $500 price barrier as the internet expanded, so everybody stood a chance of getting something they could see more use for.
Other memorable quotes can be found for Bill Gates
"Nobody will need more than 640k of memory"
These days that would be just for the application Splash Screen.
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Paul Carpenter | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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There will always be comments which people made which in hindsight prove to be incorrect, but I think the time of his passing should also be a opportunity to remember the vast ways in which the world is different due to the creation of DEC/Digital and the technologies/ideas which originated there.
Of course, I may be influenced by the fact that my day job involves me working with DEC equipment and has for a long time...
Simon.
-- Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world
Everyone reading this group owes Ken Olsen a lot.
Ken Olsen's was behind moving computers from specialized rooms in institutions to a lab with a wall plug. DEC under his leadership broke the $100,000, $60,000, $20,000 and $10,000 barriers all important steps in making computing available to everyone. The creative atmosphere in the old mill and Ken Olsen's vision brought us so many unexpected computer based applications.
My sympathy to Ken Olsen's family.
w..
-- Walter Banks Byte Craft Limited
I was fascinated by electonics as a kid. I thought TV repair was the highest calling in life. Then in 8th grade shop we did a field trip a couple of towns away and visited fledgling DEC to see a computer. They put on the big show. Had a vector display that drew a martini glass on the screen, including an olive with a pick in it. Green phosphor of course. Followed this up by sitting a transistor radio next to another box and playing a song (might have been the national anthem) with computer noise. I was awed.
Ken Olsen's vision changed my life. Thanks Ken.
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As others have pointed out Bill Gates didn't much better.
Now let's dwell on a real visionary: Tesla.
Long before the war and practical computers, he depicted the internet. He foresaw smart flying bombs that were moved by "reaction force", greatly faster than propellors can attain, i.e. rockets at supersonic speed. (That was *long* before the V2.)
[Edison invented the light bulb. The transformer, AC current, electric motors were all invented by Tesla.]Groetjes Albert
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-- Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst
....
Edison hated AC current, and tried to 'invent' the word/phrase/saying of being 'Westinghoused' as being electrocuted by AC current was fatal compared to DC.
Apparently he even set up a demonstration (I beleive in New York), where he demonstrated being 'Westinghoused' on a live elephant!
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Actually a lot of early motor work and other magnetics was attributed to Joseph Henry, he of the unit of Inductance, which was before Tesla.
Joseph Henry died in 1878, when Nikola Tesla was only 12 !
Tesla by the late 1930's was considered a bit of crank by many people.
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No, he did not, Joseph Swan did!
-- Stef (remove caps, dashes and .invalid from e-mail address to reply by mail)
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
put
.=A0I
His influence has been huge also abroad. In Bulgaria there was a huge institute and a factory - thousands of employees, perhaps more than DEC had - which were busy cloning PDPs and VAX-es (I am not sure how far they got with the latter, don't know if they got into production). Practically all of the output of the clone factory (functional equivalent would be a better term than clone, I guess) was going to the USSR, as far as I know (just had friends working there, at that time I was busy learning the trade on what little Motorola MPUs I could get to build something around, a 6809 machine I had built was my first real workhorse).
Dimiter
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No, James Bowman Lindsay was the first to demonstrate a sensible working electric light (though earlier Sir Humphry Davy had made a platinum strip glow using a large current).
Joseph Swan was the first to make light bulbs that could be produced and used practically.
Edison was an excellent business man who also happened to be an inventor. He has historically been given the undue credit for a lot of developments made by other inventors, because he was good at industrialising, publicising and patenting inventions.
Oops, I somehow remembered Joseph Swan as the first with a _bulb_, but it seems there where other before him. This page gives a nice timeline of the invention of the light bulb.
From this page, it is not clear if James Bowman Lindsay used a bulb or not. The first indicated person there to use a vacuum tube is Warren de la Rue.
-- Stef (remove caps, dashes and .invalid from e-mail address to reply by mail) Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
I don't know for sure, but I think it Lindsay used a bulb.
But this case demonstrates that it is rare you can say that a particular person actually invented something - it's usually a case of further development of an idea someone else had previously.
So the existence of Olimex is not just an accident!
Mel.
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