DECUS was an independent computer user group related to
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. HP has its United States offices at the former old Compaq Campus in unincorporated Harris County, Texas, Latin America offices in Miami-Dade County, Florida,...
and HP Partners.
The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of
DECUSDECUS was an independent computer user group related to Hewlett-Packard and HP Partners.The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community representing more than 50,000...
,
EncompassConnect, Your Independent HP Business Technology Community, Connect User Group CommunityFormed from the consolidation of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG in May, 2008, Connect is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community representing more than 50,000 participants...
,
HP-InterexHP-Interex was the EMEA HP Users Organisation, representing the user community of Hewlett-Packard computers.The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of HP-Interex, DECUS, Encompass, and ITUG is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community representing more than...
, and ITUG is
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. HP has its United States offices at the former old Compaq Campus in unincorporated Harris County, Texas, Latin America offices in Miami-Dade County, Florida,...
’s largest user community representing more than 50,000 participants.
DECUS was the
Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society, a
users' groupA users' group is a type of club focused on the use of a particular technology, usually computer-related....
for
Digital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC...
computers. Members included companies and organisations who purchased DEC equipment; many members were application programmers who wrote code for DEC machines or
system programmersSystem programming is the activity of programming system software. The primary distinguishing characteristic of systems programming when compared to application programming is that application programming aims to produce software which provides services to the user System programming (or systems...
who managed DEC systems. DECUS was founded in 1961.
DECUS was legally a part of the
Digital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC...
and subsidized by it,
but it was run by volunteers.
DECUS was an independent computer user group related to
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. HP has its United States offices at the former old Compaq Campus in unincorporated Harris County, Texas, Latin America offices in Miami-Dade County, Florida,...
and HP Partners.
The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of
DECUSDECUS was an independent computer user group related to Hewlett-Packard and HP Partners.The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community representing more than 50,000...
,
EncompassConnect, Your Independent HP Business Technology Community, Connect User Group CommunityFormed from the consolidation of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG in May, 2008, Connect is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community representing more than 50,000 participants...
,
HP-InterexHP-Interex was the EMEA HP Users Organisation, representing the user community of Hewlett-Packard computers.The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of HP-Interex, DECUS, Encompass, and ITUG is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community representing more than...
, and ITUG is
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. HP has its United States offices at the former old Compaq Campus in unincorporated Harris County, Texas, Latin America offices in Miami-Dade County, Florida,...
’s largest user community representing more than 50,000 participants.
History
DECUS was the
Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society, a
users' groupA users' group is a type of club focused on the use of a particular technology, usually computer-related....
for
Digital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC...
computers. Members included companies and organisations who purchased DEC equipment; many members were application programmers who wrote code for DEC machines or
system programmersSystem programming is the activity of programming system software. The primary distinguishing characteristic of systems programming when compared to application programming is that application programming aims to produce software which provides services to the user System programming (or systems...
who managed DEC systems. DECUS was founded in 1961.
DECUS was legally a part of the
Digital Equipment CorporationDigital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC...
and subsidized by it,
but it was run by volunteers. DEC staff were not eligible to join DECUS, but were allowed (and encouraged) to participate in DECUS activities. DEC in turn relied on DECUS as an important channel of communication with its customers.
The DECUS U.S. Chapter conducted technical conferences at various locations, and ran other operations like Local User Groups (LUGs) and Special Interest Groups. Chapters in other nations did likewise. DECUS also promoted the open exchange of user-developed software, largely via
magnetic tapeMagnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording generally consisting of a thin magnetizable coating on a long and narrow strip of plastic. Nearly all recording tape is of this type, whether used for recording audio or video or for computer data storage. It was originally developed in Germany,...
.
DECUS played a critical role in the development of
computer games"Computer Games" is a single by New Zealand group, Mi-Sex released in 1979 in Australia and New Zealand and in 1981 throughout Europe. It was the single that launched the band, and was hugely popular, particularly in Australia and New Zealand...
in North America in the 1970s. The pioneering titles
AdventureColossal Cave Adventure was the first computer adventure game. It was originally designed by Will Crowther, a programmer and caving enthusiast who based the layout on part of the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky. The Colossal Cave subnetwork has many entrances, one of which is known as Bedquilt...
by Will Crowther;
BaseballBaseball was the first-ever baseball computer game, and was created on a PDP-10 mainframe computer at Pomona College in 1971 by student Don Daglow. The game continued to be enhanced periodically through 1976...
,
DungeonDungeon was one of the earliest computer role-playing games, running on PDP-10 mainframe computers manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation.Dungeon was written in either 1975 or 1976 by Don Daglow, then a student at Claremont Graduate University...
and
Star TrekStar Trek was a text-based mainframe computer game written by Don Daglow on a PDP-10 timesharing computer at Pomona College in 1972, and upgraded periodically through 1974, including contributions by Jonathan Osser...
by
Don DaglowDon Daglow is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known for designing a series of pioneering simulation games and role-playing games, as well as the first computer baseball game and the first graphical MMORPG, all between 1971 and 1995...
and
Hunt the WumpusHunt the Wumpus is an early computer game, based on a simple hide and seek format featuring a mysterious monster that lurks deep inside a network of rooms. It was originally a text-based game written in BASIC...
by
Gregory YobGregory Yob was an American computer game designer.Gregory was born in Eugene, Oregon. An article about his experiment on simulating gravitational fields with droplets of water on a soap bubble was published in Scientific American in December 1964, under The Amateur Scientist.His one published...
provided a foundation for the games industry. One of the first real-time interactive multi-user games,
MTrek (MultiTrek), was also distributed on DECUS tapes. Major commercial game titles including
ZorkZork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language...
were first popularized by DECUS.
The PLATO system performed the same function on
CDCControl Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....
computers during the decade.
In the 1990s, DECUS played a significant role in integration of isolated post-soviet scientific, technology and business communities into worldwide community.
In 1998,
CompaqCompaq Computer Corporation was an American personal computer company founded in 1982, and is now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard.The company was formed by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto — former Texas Instruments senior managers...
acquired Digital, and DECUS became a Compaq user group.
In 2000, the DECUS U.S. Chapter incorporated as the independent user group
EncompassConnect, Your Independent HP Business Technology Community, Connect User Group CommunityFormed from the consolidation of DECUS, Encompass, HP-Interex, and ITUG in May, 2008, Connect is Hewlett-Packard’s largest user community representing more than 50,000 participants...
.
In 2002,
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company , commonly referred to as HP, is a technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. HP has its United States offices at the former old Compaq Campus in unincorporated Harris County, Texas, Latin America offices in Miami-Dade County, Florida,...
acquired Compaq, and DECUS became an HP User Society.
Local Chapters
Membership was organized by country. Each chapter acted as part of the worldwide Association of Hewlett-Packard User Groups. DECUS had some 7,500 members, mostly system, network, and applications specialists as well as IT Managers.
Association activities: The
HP User Society DECUS promoted the exchange of information and know-how between its members, manufacturers and partners. The association supported its members in the representation of their interests against HP and partners, helped in problem solving and facilitates formation of opinion and advanced training by organizing events.
External links