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Ken Olsen
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Kenneth Harry Olsen (born on February 20, 1926) is an American engineer who co-founded 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.
Among Digital employees, Ken Olsen was revered throughout his career for his paternalistic management style and his fostering of engineering innovation.
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Kenneth Harry Olsen (born on February 20, 1926) is an American engineer who co-founded 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.
Among Digital employees, Ken Olsen was revered throughout his career for his paternalistic management style and his fostering of engineering innovation. He ran Digital according to his personal ethics and values, unusual in the business world at the time, which stemmed from his strong religious beliefs. 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.
Unlike some corporate executives of his day, Ken Olsen was a man of the people – he was famous for stopping to talk with employees at all levels of the company, whether to distribute turkeys at Christmas, to visit a local sales office while visiting customers, or to see what was new on the manufacturing line at the old Mill in Maynard.
Olsen was the focus of a 1988 biography, "The Ultimate Entrepreneur: The Story of Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment Corporation," by Glenn Rifkin and George Harrar.
A couple of Olsen's public statements were seized upon by the trade press and have overshadowed his more meaningful contributions.
In 1977, he infamously quipped, "there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." However, this quote is often taken out of context, since the computer he was referring to was not the same as the modern PC, but one of science fiction: "...the fully computerized home that automatically turned lights on and off and that prepared meals and controlled daily diets ...". Olsen on many occasions mentioned having computers in his home.
In 1987 he gave the first of his infamous 'snake oil speeches', taken by some to be referring indirectly to the Unix Conspiracy. 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 retired from DEC in 1992. He subsequently became the chairman of Advanced Modular Systems.
Olsen is a trustee of Gordon College (Massachusetts). The Ken Olsen Science Center was named after him in 2006. 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.
He holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT.
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