Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital, No More

Ken Olsen, founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, passed away recently. He was 84‎

Mr. Olsen, one of America’s most triumphant entrepreneurs, passed away recently. He ‎was responsible for starting Digital on $70,000 in seed money, along with a partner in ‎‎1957 in Maynard, Mass. The company now has more than 120,000 employees located in ‎nearly 95 nations, only behind I.B.M. The Company rose to great heights in the late ‎‎1980s, with sales fetching $14 billion. ‎

The advent of the Personal Computer market and his reluctance to change focus forced ‎him to resign in July 1992. Later the Compaq Computer Corporation acquired the ‎company in 1998 for $9.6 billion. ‎

Mr. Bill Gates had used a DEC computer as a 13-year-old, which led him to create ‎personal computer software on a DEC PDP-10 computer. Digital built small, powerful ‎and elegantly designed “minicomputers” in the 1960s. The minicomputer had a ready ‎market in research laboratories, engineering enterprises and other entities handling very ‎large data. ‎

Born in Bridgeport, Conn., on Feb. 20, 1926, Mr.Olsen grew up in Stratford. His parents ‎were children of Norwegian immigrants. Mr. Olsen obtained his bachelor’s and master’s ‎degrees in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, He worked ‎at M.I.T.’s new Lincoln Laboratory in 1950 in interactive computing. ‎

Mr. Olsen hired smart people, gave them responsibility and wanted them to perform like ‎adults and they performed equally well. Mr. Olsen’s wife, Eeva-Liisa Aulikki Olsen, died ‎in March 2009. A son, Glenn, is also no more. He is survived by two sons, one daughter and five grandchildren.