| FYI - We decided not to go with the chart after all for the SEPTEMBER issue
(space limitation and there were restrictions on cutting down K.O's speech
that we reprinted). However, in my quest for major events in DEC's history,
I came across a project our Public Relations department was doing. The
attached information was given to our customer at DECWORLD.
Thanks to everyone who participated - I forwarded some of your comments to
Public Relations for inclusion in their document.
- Anne Marie Brako
MILESTONES IN DIGITAL'S HISTORY
August 1957 -- Digital opens in Maynard, Massachusetts,
with three employees and 8,500 square
feet of production space in a converted
woolen mill.
February 1958 -- Systems modules go on the market. First
fiscal year sales: $94,000.
November 1960 -- Introduction of PDP-1, the world's first
small, interactive computer.
June 1962 -- Annual sales reach $6.5 million.
March 1963 -- First European sales and service office
opens with three people in Munich,
Germany. First Canadian sales office
opens with two people in Ottawa.
April 1963 -- The world's first minicomputer, PDP-5, is
announced.
September 1963 -- PDP-1 operating system, the first
timesharing system, is introduced.
March 1964 -- Digital begins manufacturing in a woolen
mill at Carleton Place near Ottawa,
Canada.
June 1964 -- Subsidiaries formed in Australia and the
United Kingdom.
July 1964 -- First European Customer Training Center
opened in Reading, United Kingdom.
October 1964 -- Digital unveils its first 36-bit
computer, PDP-6.
April 1965 -- Introduction of PDP-8, the world's first
mass-produced minicomputer.
August 1966 -- Digital makes its first public stock
offering.
March 1967 -- PDP-10 is introduced.
June 1967 -- Manufacturing of PDP-8 computers and
peripherals is started in a Reading,
England, facility.
-- Annual sales reach $38 million.
January 1968 -- Digital stock begins trading on the
American Stock Exchange.
July 1968 -- Manufacturing operations begin in San
German, Puerto Rico.
-- Employment increases 68% to over 2,600
people, including 225 engineers and
programmers and 360 field engineers.
There are over 50 sales and service
offices located in 11 countries.
May 1969 -- Digital stock splits three-for-one.
June 1969 -- European Headquarters opens in Geneva,
Switzerland.
April 1970 -- First deliveries of PDP-11/20, Digital's
first 16-bit minicomputer and first
member of the world's most successful
minicomputer family.
June 1970 -- Total number of installed Digital
computers passes 8,000, of which
approximately 1,800 are in Europe.
October 1970 -- Digital establishes its first West Coast
manufacturing operation at Mountain View,
California, for making disks.
December 1970 -- Digital stock begins trading on the New
York Stock Exchange.
June 1971 -- First annual customer satisfaction
survey is taken.
November 1971 -- Manufacturing starts in Galway, Ireland.
-- DECsystem-10 is introduced.
January 1972 -- Spaced is leased in Springfield,
Massachusetts, Armory to build power
supplies and sub-assemblies.
June 1972 -- Annual sales reach $188 million. Digital
has 7,800 employees.
October 1972 -- Taiwan plant opens for core memory
stringing operations.
December 1973 -- Hong Kong plant opens for core memory
stringing operations.
March 1974 -- 30,000th computer system is shipped.
April 1974 -- MPS, Digital's first microprocessor, is
introduced.
-- Digital enters Fortune 500, ranking 475th
in sales.
June 1974 -- Maynard Industrial Park (the Mill) -- 23
buildings, 1.6 million square feet -- is
purchased.
February 1975 -- LSI-11, Digital's first 16-bit
microcomputer, and the powerful PDP-11/70
are added to the PDP-11 family.
April 1975 -- Introduction of Digital's Network
Architecture.
September 1975 -- 50,000th computer system is delivered,
just 15 years after introduction of
Digital's first computer.
January 1976 -- Introduction of 36-bit DECSYSTEM-20, the
lowest-priced general-purpose timesharing
system on the market.
-- New manufacturing plant opens in Ayr,
Scotland.
October 1976 -- Digital stock splits three-for-one.
May 1977 -- New manufacturing plant opens in
Kaufbeuren, West Germany.
June 1977 -- Digital breaks the billion-dollar-a-year
mark in sales; has 36,000 employees.
July 1977 -- Introduction of the industry's first
computerized remote diagnosis.
October 1977 -- Introduction of VAX-11/780, the first
member of the VAX computer family.
-- Stock is now traded on the Pacific Stock
Exchange.
February 1978 -- Digital ships its 100,000th computer.
July 1978 -- Digital's first retail computer store
opens in Manchester, New Hampshire.
March 1979 -- Digital opens the largest industrial
training facility in New England at
Bedford, Massachusetts.
January 1980 -- 200,000th computer shipped.
February 1980 -- Introduction of DECnet Phase III -- the
most advanced networking in the computer
industry.
April 1980 -- Digital opens state-of-the-art high
technology center for manufacturing
semiconductors at Hudson, Massachusetts.
June 1980 -- Digital, Intel and Xerox cooperate in
Ethernet local network project.
-- Digital breaks $2 billion mark in sales.
October 1980 -- Introduction of VAX-11/750, second member
of the VAX family and the industry's
first Large Scale Integration (LSI)
32-bit minicomputer.
March 1981 -- Announcement of PDP-11/24 minicomputer
system.
June 1981 -- Digital breaks $3 billion mark in sales.
March 1982 -- Production begins at Greenville, South
Carolina, printed circuit facility.
April 1982 -- Introduction of the VAX-11/730, the third
member of Digital's 32-bit computer
family.
May 1982 -- Introduction of a complete range of
personal computers -- Professional 325
and 350, Rainbow 100 and DECmate II.
-- Digital ranks 137th in total sales in
Fortune Magazine's annual directory of
the largest industrial corporations in
the United States.
June 1982 -- Annual sales reach $3.9 billion.
Employee population is over 67,000.
August 1982 -- Digital celebrates its first 25 years,
during which over 360,000 computers have
been shipped.
-- Announcement of RA60 and RA81 disks and
Digital Storage Architecture put Digital
at the forefront in storage technology.
September 1982 -- Japan Research and Development Center
opens in Tokyo.
April 1983 -- Digital announces VAXclusters, a process
for tying VAX processors together in a
loose processor coupling.
-- The company breaks into Fortune
Magazine's top 100 U.S. industrial
companies by ranking 95th in sales.
May 1983 -- Digital donates its largest single gift,
$25 million, to Project Athena, a joint
experimental program with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
IBM which will integrate the next
generation of computers and interactive
grapics into undergraduate education
throughout all five MIT schools.
June 1983 -- Annual sales reach $4 billion.
October 1983 -- Introduction of MicroVAX I and
VAX-11/725, designed to extend the 32-bit
VAX computer family.
November 1983 -- VT200 family of video terminals
introduced.
December 1983 -- DECtalk, a text-to-speech system that
allows computers to talk, is announced.
January 1984 -- Systems Research Center formed in Palo
Alto, California.
March 1984 -- Digital reports worldwide employee
population to be 78,500, in 32 major
manufacturing sites and over 400 sales
and service offices.
April 1984 -- Introduction of VAX-11/785, the most
powerful single computer to date in
Digital's VAX family.
-- The company rises in rank from 95 to 84
in Fortune Magazine's listing of the top
100 U.S. industrial companies.
-- 25,000th VAX computer system shipped.
June 1984 -- Annual sales reach $5.6 billion. The
company maintains 660 offices in 47
countries with 85,600 employees.
July 1984 -- Introduction of MicroPDP-11/73, a
top-of-the-line minicomputer with
performance approximating that of a
midrange computer.
September 1984 -- Introduction of the Professional 380
system.
October 1984 -- Announcement of VAX 8600, the first of a
new generation of computers within the
VAX family and the highest performance
computer system in Digital's history.
-- Introduction of VAXstation I, the
company's first true 32-bit single-user
workstation.
-- Announcement of DECmate III, Digital's
lowest-cost desktop computer, optimized
for word processing.
December 1984 -- Introduction of PDP-11/84 minicomputer
for Original Equipment Manufacturers.
February 1985 -- VAXstation 500 is introduced.
March 1985 -- Introduction of Rainbow 190 system.
April 1985 -- For the eleventh consecutive year,
Digital increases its standing in Fortune
Magazine's listing of the nation's 100
leading U.S. companies, moving up 19
places to number 65.
May 1985 -- The company lengthens its lead in
integrated distributed computing with the
announcement of two powerful new
additions to the VAX family of computers:
MicroVAX II, the industry's most powerful
supermicrocomputer system, which
incorporates the revolutionary
"VAX-on-a-chip" and has the highest level
of functionality of any 32-bit processor
in the industry; and VAXstation II, a
high-performance graphics workstation.
June 1985 -- Annual sales reach $6.7 billion. The
company now maintains over 900 facilities
worldwide, representing over 29 million
square feet of space.
July 1985 -- Digital becomes the first company to
register a new semiconductor chip under
the Semiconductor Protection Act of 1984
(the MicroVAX II chip).
August 1985 -- Digital ships 2,000th MicroVAX II.
November 1985 -- Introduction of MicroPDP-11/83, the most
powerful Q-bus 16-bit-wordlength computer
in Digital's history.
December 1985 -- The VAX 8650, with a CPU 44% more
powerful than the VAX 8600, is
introduced.
January 1986 -- Introduction of the VAXstation II/GPX,
the first technical workstation for the
UNIX marketplace.
-- Introduction of the top-of-the-line VAX
8800 and midrange VAX 8300 and VAX 8200.
February 1986 -- Digital hosts DECWORLD '86, the largest
single-company computer exposition ever
held.
-- Announcement of DECconnect wiring
strategy and related products and
services -- extends networking
leadership.
April 1986 -- Introduction of the midrange VAX 8500.
-- Stock splits two-for-one.
-- The company rises in rank to number 55 on
Fortune Magazine's listing of the leading
100 industrial companies.
June 1986 -- Annual sales reach $7.6 billion. The
company now employs over 94,000 people,
occupying over 31 million square feet of
space.
-- Networking center dedicated at King
Street in Littleton, Massachusetts.
August 1986 -- Introduction of VAX 8550 and VAX 8700.
September 1986 -- Introduction of VAXmate, a networked
personal computer which can combine the
resources of the VAX-VMS and MS-DOS*
operating systems.
November 1986 -- Digital introduces Local Area
VAXcluster systems, extending distributed
computing to the work group.
January 1987 -- Introduction of VAX 8978 and VAX 8974,
Digital's most powerful systems to date,
offering up to 50 times the power of the
industry-standard VAX-11/780.
-- Moody's Investors Services raises
Digital's long-term debt rating to Aaa,
its highest rating.
February 1987 -- Digital ships its 100,000th VAX computer
system, a VAX 8800 to be used for oil
exploration and production computing at
The Standard Oil Company's Technical Data
Center in Dallas, Texas.
-- Introduction of VAXstation 2000 and
MicroVAX 2000, Digital's lowest-cost
workstation and multiuser computers,
respectively.
March 1987 -- VAX 8250, VAX 8350, VAX 8530 -- three new
midrange computers -- are unveiled.
April 1987 -- Digital climbs to number 44 in Fortune
magazine's annual listing of the largest
U.S. industrial corporations, marking the
13th consecutive year the company's
standing has risen.
-- Business Week magazine ranks Digital
eighth among "America's Most Valuable
Companies," based on a market value of
$21.6 billion -- a 128 percent increase
from the previous year.
-- The VT330 and VT340 signify the
introduction of a new generation of video
terminals, with twice the resolution, up
to five times the speed and significantly
lower prices than their predecessors.
June 1987 -- Digital and Cray Research, Inc., the
leading producer of supercomputers,
announce cooperative agreement to market
and develop products that link their
respective computer environments --
beginning with the VAX Supercomputer
Gateway.
-- Annual sales climb 24% to $9.39 billion
for Fiscal Year 1987, with net income up
84% to $1.14 billion. Return on
shareholder equity rises to 19% in FY87
from 12% in FY86.
August 1987 -- Easynet, Digital's internal computer
network, registers its 20,000th node. It
is the largest private computer network
in the world.
-- Thirty years after its inception, Digital
has 110,500 employees, occupies 33.6
million square feet in 1,057 buildings,
and does business in 64 countries.
September 1987 -- DECWORLD '87 draws 48,500 people to
Boston's World Trade Center over a 9-day
period. With the Queen Elizabeth 2 and
Star/ship Oceanic serving as floating
hotels and conference centers, invited
customers from around the world
experienced the most expansive
demonstration of computing capabilities
ever mounted by one company.
-- Digital unveils a new generation of its
MicroVAX computer family with the
introduction of the MicroVAX 3500 and
3600 systems, two high-performance,
CMOS-technology based departmental
computers. Also announced: VAXstation
3200 and 3500, two new workstations with
triple the performance of previous
VAXstation offerings at a comparable
price; VAXservers which share the new
MicroVAX processor technology; and Phase
V of the Digital Network Architecture,
migrating DECnet products to full
compliance with the OSI (Open Systems
Interconnection) model.
Mark Fredrickson
September 1987 MF/55
* MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft Corp.
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