Ken Olsen
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Kenneth Harry Olsen (born on February 20, 1926) is an American engineer who cofounded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957 with colleague Harlan Anderson and venture capital provided by Georges Doriot's American Research and Development Corporation. He was born in Stratford, Connecticut. Olsen was a Massachusetts engineer who had been working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory on the TX-2 project.
In 1977 he infamously quipped "there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home" and in 1987 gave the first of his infamous 'snake oil speeches' and quipped "UNIX is snake oil". While Olsen did believe OpenVMS was a better solution for DEC customers and often talked of the strengths of the system, he did approve and encourage an internal (albeit rather half-hearted) effort to produce a native BSD-based UNIX product on the VAX line of computers called Ultrix. However this line never got enthusiastic comprehensive support at DEC.
He holds S.B. and S.M. degrees in course 6, or EECS, from MIT.
[edit] External links
- 1988 Transcript of an Oral History Interview with Ken Olsen
- National Inventor's Hall of Fame profile
- Snopes' account of Olsen's "computer in his home" remark Olsen co-founded Digitial Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957. The company began as a manufacturer of "single-board" computers. The first product was called a Falcon. These products were sold to scientist and engineers. Later the company developed a 16 bit laboratory computer called the pdp-11. DEC developed market dominance in scientific, engineering and manufacturing computers between 1970 and 1990. The company reached $13 Billion in annual sales before it was acquired by Compaq Computers in 1997.
