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March 1964

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Document:	A Computer that grows BusWeek 640314
Order Number:	XX-B6856-7A
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Pages:	3
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A computer

that grows with you

NEW PRODUCTS

A computer that grows with you
Latest machine is designed to serve 128 terminals at once,
and to have subsystems added as required. Called
the PDP-6, it’s made by company that serves mainly scientists
A very small company this week
unveiled a computer that, in some
respects, is the biggest ever.
Digital Equipment Corp., of Maynard, Mass., put the machine together. It’s called the PDP-6, and it
costs $2-million if you want all the
available bells and whistles. And
these are considerable, particularly
its outsized central memory with a
capacity of 262,000 words (compared
with 64,000 in the larger IBM scientific computers), which, among other
things, allows the PDP-6 to serve up
to 128 input-output
stations simultaneously.
Most computers are designed to
work one problem after another, very
fast. What’s unusual
about the
PDP-6 is that it is designed to work
on a whole lot of problems at once,
though at moderate speed. Digital
Equipment
believes it is the first
commercially available computer to
offer time-sharing
and multi-processing as standard features-a
conqept that for years has fascinated
experts at MIT [BU Feb.
as well as DEC’s scientist
ck. DEC is a maverick of a
mpany that’s virtually unknown in
usiness
data-processing
circles,
h, its products are about as
as Hershey bars to scieneers involved in comctronic research and

Designer Gordon Bell and Richard Best, chief engineer of Digital Equipment
Corp., believe the PDP-6 can outperform computers that cost twice as much.

ny was set up seven
n a $70,000 shoestring
Boston’s venture capmerican Research CsrDelopment Corp. DEC turned out to
e one of ARDC’s more successful
ents-it
was running in the
ithin a year, and on net sales
ly $lO-million in the fiscal
ding last June 30, reported
et earnings after taxes of $l.l-mil1ion.
DEC does about half its business
y mail order, selling hundreds of
ifferent electronic circuit modules
Ii little grey boxes packed with traniistors-that
count, switch, amplify,
or mix electrical signals. It’s hard to
walk through a computer or elec-

No super service. DEC breaks
with other computer industry practices. It doesn’t lease its equipment.
Nor is it anxious to maintain it. It
prefers to have customers send their
own employees to a computer maintenance training course that DEC
offers.
In an industry known for super
service, DEC’s take-it-or-leave-it approach comes as a breath of fresh
air. So does the attitude of the company’s two top executives, Pres. Kenneth Olsen and Vice-Pres. Harlan
Anderson: After due consideration
they decided they wouldn’t
have
their picture taken with their new
computer because they don’t believe
in personal aggrandisement.
Nor do they believe in pell-me11
growth: “Our biggest problem is restraint,” says Olsen. The company
has never needed new equity capital,
and Olsen doesn’t think he will need
it in the future, since he wants DEC
to grow slowly enough to maintain
his employees’ “ spirit of camaraderie.”
intimate approach. SO far, DEC’s
customers have been largely scientific laboratories
and universities.
To some extent, these clients form
a loose fraternity that traces its origins back to MIT and Lincoln Laboratory, where Olsen and Anderson
also learned their computer savvy.
The company encourages the intimate approach to sales, keeps track
of every inquiry, letter, and order
on a computer tape, and refers to
the name file each time correspondence comes in. DEC does almost no
advertising, but puts much effort into
its mail-order operation, doing all
its own technical writing, printing,
and art work in a big print shop.
Its entire plant is in part of the
former American Woolen Co. textile

tronics laboratory without running
into the DEC trademark. Since DEC
modules are used primarily in designing and testing computers, it
was almost inevitable that the company eventually would build computers, too.
By the dozen. Eschewing complicated acronyms like WHIRLWIND
or MANIAC,
DEC calls its computers “Programmed
Data Processors,” and they are known as
PDP-1 through PDP-6. The PDP-1,
introduced in 1960, is a relatively
fast machine. It caught on with
scientific laboratories in the Boston
area due to its low price-$120,000
-and because it’s relatively simple
to add on to it and attach such spccial devices as cathode-ray tubes
that handle graphic as well as numerical information.
Last year, the company brought
out the PDP-5, a small-scale computer selling for $27,000. At the Fall
Joint Computer Conference, in Las
Vegas, the computer
was programmed so visitors could try their
hand at shooting down a simulated
satellite-a
moving circle displayed
on the computer’s display tube. Successful shots were rewarded by a
croaking rendition of Taps played
by the computer’s memory circuits.
Inside one cabinet was a handlettered sign reading “$218,880 a
dozen.” The company’s quantity discounts start with six units.
The PDP-5 has been selling
briskly-by
the half dozen-ever
since. So has an important acc’essory
that DEC developed to go with ita very small magnetic tape unit with
5-in. reels called the Micro Tape.
This device fills the gap between
relatively slow punched paper tape
readers and printers and regular
high-speed tape units.

Reprinted

from

Business

Week-Copyright

1964

McGraw-Hill,

Inc.,

330

West

42nd

Street,

mill-a
century-old, rambling brick
complex that’s now a rabbit-warreu
of small companies.
Computer-man’s
computer. Olsen
and Anderson are confident that the
PDP-6 will find a market. Says designer Gordon Bell: “We tried to
think out what a computer should
be, then designed a system that
could grow gracefully and easily.”
He believes the PDP-6 systems will
outperform systems that cost twice
as much.
The elements of the computer system are built on a modular basis,
and are interconnected by a network
of high-speed circuits called busses.
The design is such that subsystems
added to the network do not have to
work synchronously;
that makes it
easier to add other elements as the
system grows.
Obviously, the machine is a computer-man’s computer, and is aimed
at the relatively few customers who
feel themselves limited by present
commercial
equipment.
Since the
machine was just introduced, DEC
claims no sales. All Olsen will say
is: “There has been considerable interest on the part of people who are
interested in buying more than one.”
Wider
market. Scientific users
make up most of DEC’s clients,
but this, says Olsen, may not always be so. “As business applications get more sophisticated,
the
machine that’s required differs less
from the scientific machines. This
way, we might get into business applications.”
And perhaps by the time DEC
ge s big enough to supply a lot more
cu. tomers, there may be lots more
cu tomers sophisticated enough to
bu low-cost, highly advanced equipm 1 t that comes without much service or software.

New

York,

New

York.

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