Ken Olsen, American engineer, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation died he was , 84.

Kenneth Harry Olsen was an American engineer who co-founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957 with colleague Harlan Anderson died he was , 84.

(February 20, 1926 – February 6, 2011)

 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 an B.S (1950) and an M.S. (1952) degrees 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.^[6]
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. In the 1960s Olsen received patents for a saturable switch, a diode transformer gate circuit, magnetic core memory, and the line printer buffer.
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.^[7]
In 1986, Fortune Magazine named Olsen "America's most successful entrepreneur",^[8] and the same year he received the IEEE Engineering Leadership Recognition Award.^[9] 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.

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".^[10] 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.^{[citation needed]}
He was awarded the Vermilye Medal in 1980. Olsen retired from DEC in 1992. 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] 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.^[14][3] His family also did not comment on any details surrounding his death.^[2]

Quotations

Two quotes of his are frequently taken out of context, and are indeed among the least understood in the industry.

• 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 and promulgated the idea.^[15]

• 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. Indeed, most of the "thinking" now happens "out there," as with a mainframe and an office full of terminals way back when. Note that by "windows" he was not referring to Microsoft Windows, but rather to a windowing capability in a general sense: subdividing the screen so that more than one program can display its output at the same time.

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