Ken Olsen

Kenneth Harry Olsen (February 20, 1926^[2] – February 6, 2011^[3]) was an American engineer who co-founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957 with colleague Harlan Anderson.^[4]

Background

Kenneth Harry Olsen was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and grew up in the neighboring town of Stratford, Connecticut. His father's parents came from Norway and his mother's parents from Sweden. Olsen began his career working summers in a machine shop. Fixing radios in his basement gave him the reputation of a neighborhood inventor.

After serving in the United States Navy between 1944 and 1946, Olsen attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned both a BS (1950) and an MS (1952) degree in Electrical engineering.^[5]

Career

During his studies at MIT, the Office of Naval Research of the United States Department of the Navy recruited Olsen to help build a computerized flight simulator. Also while at MIT he directed the building of the first transistorized research computer. Olsen was an engineer who had been working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory on the TX-2 project.

In 1957, Ken Olsen and an MIT colleague, Harlan Anderson, decided to start their own firm. They approached American Research and Development Corporation, an early venture capital firm, which had been founded by Georges Doriot, and founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). In the 1960s, Olsen received patents for a saturable switch, a diode transformer gate circuit, an improved version of magnetic core memory, and the line printer buffer. (Note that MIT professor Jay W. Forrester is generally credited with inventing the first practical magnetic core memory).

Ken Olsen was known throughout his career for his paternalistic management style and his fostering of engineering innovation. Ken Olsen's valuing of innovation and technical excellence spawned and popularized techniques such as engineering matrix management, that are broadly employed today throughout many industries.^[6]Mr. Olsen did not believe in fancy trappings for himself. He kept a simple office in an old mill building and when some of his staff built him a modern, expensive office famously he refused to use it. He also was an accomplished pilot and flew his own plane when visiting suppliers (often unannounced).

In 1986, Fortune Magazine named Olsen "America's most successful entrepreneur",^[7] and the same year he received the IEEE Engineering Leadership Recognition Award.^[8] Olsen was the subject of a 1988 biography, The Ultimate Entrepreneur: The Story of Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment Corporation written by Glenn Rifkin and George Harrar.

In 1993, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers awarded Olsen their IEEE Founders Medal.

He was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 1996. He was awarded the Vermilye Medal in 1980. He was inducted as an Honorary Member of UPE (the International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Sciences) on October 8, 1975.

In 2011, he was listed at #6 on the MIT150 list of the top 150 innovators and ideas from MIT.

Later career history

In 1987 he gave the first of his infamous "snake oil speeches", taken by some to be referring indirectly to the "Unix Conspiracy".^[9] While Olsen believed VMS was a better solution for DEC customers and often talked of the strengths of the system, he did approve and encourage an internal 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.

Olsen was forced to retire from DEC in 1992.^[10] He subsequently became the chairman of Advanced Modular Solutions. Olsen was also a major contributor to The Family, a religious and political organization.^[11]

Olsen was a trustee of Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts.^[12] There, the Ken Olsen Science Center was named after him in 2006,^[13] and dedicated on 27 September 2008. Its lobby features a Digital Loggia of Technology, documenting Digital's technology and history, and an interactive kiosk to which former employees have submitted their stories.

Death

Olsen died while in hospice care in Indianapolis, Indiana on February 6, 2011, aged 84. Gordon College, where he was a trustee and board member, announced his death, but did not reveal the cause of death.^[3][14] His family also did not comment on any details surrounding his death.^[2]

Awards

• 1993: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1993 awarded Olsen the IEEE Founders Medal.
• 1996: The Computer History Museum in 1996 named Olsen a Museum Fellow "for his introduction of the minicomputer and co-founding of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)."Fellow^[15]

Quotations

• from 1977: There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
  Referred to having the computer run the house, with automated doors, voice-activated faucets et cetera. He had a computer in his home for general use.^[16]
• from 1988: Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.` TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make any difference if it takes a while to fix it.
  Digital News.^[17]
• from 1992: People will get tired of managing personal computers and will want instead terminals, maybe with windows.
  Anticipated thin clients and the general client-server model of the web. ^[18]

References

Further reading

• Earls, Alan R. Digital Equipment Corporation. Arcadia Publishing, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7385-3587-6
• Schein, Edgar H. DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004. ISBN 978-1-57675-305-7

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ken Olsen

• 1988 Transcript of an Oral History Interview with Ken Olsen
• Ken Olsen, New England Economic Adventure
• Ken Olsen, co-founder of DEC, dies at 84, Mass High Tech
• DEC co-founder Kenneth Olsen mourned by computer industry Network World
• DEC : The mistakes that led to its downfall Birbeck College, University of London