OT - Ken Olsen passes away
Those on the list who were networking in the 70's and 80's will remember Ken Olsen and DEC computers. He passed away earlier this week. I posted the following on the InternetNZ members list. Its a good time to pause and reflect on where networking and computing in general has come from. On Monday or Tuesday this week Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), passed away. This may not seem relevant to InternetNZ members today, but Ken Olsen came from the post-war generation of Engineers that gave us the computer industry and the Internet. There is a very good reflection on his contribution at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/08/AR2011020803... Ken Olsen was a giant of a man both in what he achieved and physically. DEC computers were used as the first Internet routers and were incredibly well engineered and open for users to add their own interfaces and software. Ken was able to talk about technology in detail and also explain the challenges of managing a high technology company. The 70s and 80s were a time when many features of todays computers were established. DMA, memory and disk cache, floating point processors, network interfaces, what is now known as RAID arrays all came out of this era and were often developed on DEC machines. At Westinghouse Automation, we built DEC systems linked at 2Mbps - in 1979. Post Office modems had only just been approved for 1200bps Back in NZ in 1984, while rescuing a trolley bus project (Wellington's Volvo trolley busses, now painted yellow) I was able to dial from AKL to WLG at 300bps, into a PDP-11, jump across to another PDP-11 and do my editing and carry on my "day" job. (I used to carry an Osborne portable) It was DEC fiber optic gear that we used to first link buildings in 1988 - running ethernet over fiber. Sound familiar ? This was the real CityNet - the other public version was launched in 1990 also running on DEC computers. We had a GIS system running on DEC Vaxes in 1986/87 and added ortho imaging in about 1990/91 (like Google maps but accurate to 100mm). It was linked to Wellington Ratepayer data, drainage data and electricity data. I met Ken Olsen once, in 1989, at a lunch. After lunch he sent his minders out of the room and spoke very openly. He talked about the challenges of running a high tech company, not only the technology but also the staff and cultural challenges. It turns out US east-coast engineers behave differently to west-coast engineers and innovation has to be managed differently in each area. It was DEC's Western Research Lab, that produced the search engine Alta-Vista and one of the early Internet exchanges - and gave me advice on the establishment of what is now WIX, back in 1998. Through the establishment of DEC, Ken Oslen lead the way to so much of what we take for granted today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Olsen
Richard Naylor wrote:
Its a good time to pause and reflect on where networking and computing in general has come from.
[...] When I last saw him, Richard Naylor was still looking healthy.
This may not seem relevant to InternetNZ members today, but Ken Olsen came from the post-war generation of Engineers that gave us the computer industry and the Internet.
As did Richard Naylor (albeit perhaps post a slightly different war). And without talking about snake oil. - Donald Neal -- Donald Neal |"Maybe your mail is being rejected as spam," | she suggested. "Send us copies of all High Performance Computing | messages you didn't receive including The University of Waikato | their IP addresses." - Robert X. Cringely
At 10:43 a.m. 11/02/2011, Donald Neal wrote:
This may not seem relevant to InternetNZ members today, but Ken Olsen came from the post-war generation of Engineers that gave us the computer industry and the Internet. As did Richard Naylor (albeit perhaps post a slightly different war). And without talking about snake oil.
A child of the 60's. Over beer (to stay on topic) we can talk about turning 18 and having your birthdate in a "lottery" where the prize was a 2 year holiday in Vietnam courtesy of the NZ Army. Also about core memory machines and using logic analysers to debug DDCMP protocol at 2Mbps - looking at the bits coming out of the de-serialiser, byte at a time. But as I said, needs beer.
Just to clear up the portion on Vietnam - only volunteers were sent there
by the NZ Army.
Tours of Duty for the rifle companies that went, was pretty much only 1
year.
Small point I suppose but important
On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:08:45 +1300, Richard Naylor
At 10:43 a.m. 11/02/2011, Donald Neal wrote:
This may not seem relevant to InternetNZ members today, but Ken Olsen came from the post-war generation of Engineers that gave us the computer industry and the Internet. As did Richard Naylor (albeit perhaps post a slightly different war). And without talking about snake oil.
A child of the 60's. Over beer (to stay on topic) we can talk about turning 18 and having your birthdate in a "lottery" where the prize was a 2 year holiday in Vietnam courtesy of the NZ Army. Also about core memory machines and using logic analysers to debug DDCMP protocol at 2Mbps - looking at the bits coming out of the de-serialiser, byte at a time. But as I said, needs beer.
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At 02:43 p.m. 11/02/2011, peter(a)mynetworks.co.nz wrote:
Just to clear up the portion on Vietnam - only volunteers were sent there by the NZ Army.
Tours of Duty for the rifle companies that went, was pretty much only 1 year.
Small point I suppose but important
Thanks for the clarification. Like most 18 year olds, street talk gave a different perspective, that was probably incorrect. The joys of being 18. I just recall listening to the radio with my friends to see what dates came up. But this was a response to Donald's comment about a different post-war time. WW2 was Ken Olsen's era. I grew up with Malaya and Vietnam and have friends who served in both, and those "wars" are often forgotten and down played.
participants (4)
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Donald Neal -
peter＠mynetworks.co.nz -
Richard Naylor -
Richard Naylor