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In Memoriam: Kenneth Olsen
“We felt quite confident with the way we were building computers. We knew we could do almost anything we wanted to do, but the big limitation was the memory.” – Ken Olsen
This past weekend Kenneth Olsen, inventor and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation passed away. While often ridiculed for a comment made about the lack of desire for personal computers, his thoughts and intentions led to some of the computing concepts still in use today, and served as some good iron for big iron to be sharpened by.
One of the most fundamental differences between the computers put out in Digital's heyday and others is that they were 6-bit systems, instead of the 8-bit systems we are familiar with. Six bits gave just enough space to define a letter, and I'm assuming the thought process can't totally be separated from his roots, it seemed to him that it was better to borrow a register for the occasional number than to waste two bits for each letter. Practical realities and a monster machine called the s/360 turned that idea into a blip on the radar of history, but he fought the good fight anyway. In a past job I actually was able to use a DECWriter, and it reminds me of the impressions I got of Mr. Olsen while doing a research paper - it was definitely not the newest machine, but it was well-defined for what it did, and worked exceptionally well.
For those who may have more than a passing interest (and you should, not because I authored the paper, but because if you have no knowledge of history, you will be doomed to repeat it, the following link will take you to a PDF version of a biographical research paper I did on him a few years ago as part of my work in the Center for Information and Communication Sciences. While researching I tried to contact Mr. Olsen for an interview, and the closest I got was a very nice gatekeeper at one of the offices at MIT's Alumni Association who promised to pass the request on. That may be his most remarkable invention, a bubble of privacy in the era of everyone being privy to everyone else's business.
Kenneth Olsen: A Man of Faith and Science, Letters and Labs - Controversial, Blunt, and Quite Possibly More Accurate Than Ever Imagined
“We felt quite confident with the way we were building computers. We knew we could do almost anything we wanted to do, but the big limitation was the memory.” – Ken Olsen
This past weekend Kenneth Olsen, inventor and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation passed away. While often ridiculed for a comment made about the lack of desire for personal computers, his thoughts and intentions led to some of the computing concepts still in use today, and served as some good iron for big iron to be sharpened by.
One of the most fundamental differences between the computers put out in Digital's heyday and others is that they were 6-bit systems, instead of the 8-bit systems we are familiar with. Six bits gave just enough space to define a letter, and I'm assuming the thought process can't totally be separated from his roots, it seemed to him that it was better to borrow a register for the occasional number than to waste two bits for each letter. Practical realities and a monster machine called the s/360 turned that idea into a blip on the radar of history, but he fought the good fight anyway. In a past job I actually was able to use a DECWriter, and it reminds me of the impressions I got of Mr. Olsen while doing a research paper - it was definitely not the newest machine, but it was well-defined for what it did, and worked exceptionally well.
For those who may have more than a passing interest (and you should, not because I authored the paper, but because if you have no knowledge of history, you will be doomed to repeat it, the following link will take you to a PDF version of a biographical research paper I did on him a few years ago as part of my work in the Center for Information and Communication Sciences. While researching I tried to contact Mr. Olsen for an interview, and the closest I got was a very nice gatekeeper at one of the offices at MIT's Alumni Association who promised to pass the request on. That may be his most remarkable invention, a bubble of privacy in the era of everyone being privy to everyone else's business.
Kenneth Olsen: A Man of Faith and Science, Letters and Labs - Controversial, Blunt, and Quite Possibly More Accurate Than Ever Imagined
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