Ah, DEC. Some really cool stuff came out of Maynard, MA.
A few notable things about DEC:
They made computers that were affordable by smaller businesses and universities.
The PDP-10 - one of DEC’s only mainframes - was where the bulk of early Lisp development occurred, mostly for AI research.
UNIX originated on DEC hardware (before VMS).
The team that developed the Alpha (the successor to the VAX) was hired by AMD to develop the 64-bit Athlon architecture (what became X86_64 - i.e. what your computer is probably based on).
Intel chose a little-endian architecture for the 8086 because that’s what the VAX used.
TCP/IP was developed on UNIX running on a VAX.
After the minicomputer market crashed, DEC was bought by Compaq, taken out behind the woodshed, and shot like a dog.
Ah, DEC. Some really cool stuff came out of Maynard, MA.
A few notable things about DEC: