Digital Equipment Corporation Memorabilia Guide

A short history of DEC

Ken Olsen, 31, and Harlan Anderson, 27, left MIT Lincoln Laboratory and founded Digital Equipment Corporation in 1957. General Georges Doriot’s venture firm, American Research and Development, invested $70,000 for 70 percent of the stock, and the company leased space in a nineteenth-century mill in Maynard, Massachusetts. The Computer History Museum describes DEC as the first successful venture-backed computer company.

DEC sold electronic modules before it sold computers. Its first computer, the PDP-1, was designed in 1959 and first sold in 1960, and in 1965 the PDP-8 helped make DEC the leader of the minicomputer market. In 1977 DEC introduced the VAX line, which could run VAX/VMS, later OpenVMS, and UNIX. Revenues reached $3.2 billion in 1981, and by 1988 DEC was second only to IBM as the world’s largest computer company.

DEC had no strategy for the rise of personal computers. Its business began to falter around 1990, it made the first layoffs in its history, and the board forced Olsen to resign in 1992. In 1998 DEC was sold to Compaq in what was then the largest merger in the computer industry, and Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq in 2002. Those dates help place an item: pieces made after 1998 belong to the Compaq or HP years, even when they name DEC products.

Why collectors want DEC material

Olsen and Anderson wanted computers that were powerful and interactive but smaller, easier to use and much more affordable than mainframes, and DEC sold them to laboratory, business and research customers with long-term service contracts. Their users gathered in DECUS, a user society that produced its own buttons, shirts and publications.

DEC also preserved its own history. The DEC Museum Project, founded in 1975 by Ken Olsen and Gordon and Gwen Bell, became the Digital Computer Museum in the lobby of DEC’s Marlborough headquarters in 1979 and later The Computer Museum in Boston. Part of its collection moved to California in 1996, and that center became the Computer History Museum in 2000.

DECUS, the user society

Soon after the PDP-1 appeared, a group of its users met in Lexington, Massachusetts, to start a program library. DEC initially sold only hardware, so early users wrote their own software and needed a way to share it. From 1961 to 1988 the Digital Equipment Computer Users Society grew into one of the largest international societies of computer users. DEC relied on DECUS to communicate with its customers.

DECUS held technical conferences, ran special interest groups, published DECUSCOPE and circulated user-written software, largely on magnetic tape. After Compaq acquired DEC in 1998, DECUS became a Compaq user group, so check the date on late DECUS material. Objects in the Computer History Museum catalog show the range:

• A “Steal from your friends” DECUS button from about 1965, which the museum pairs with a note that DECUS members freely shared software they had written
• Lapel buttons such as “I gave to the library DECUS,” printed on a reel of tape, and product buttons such as “I’M A DATATRIEVER”
• A 1996 DECUS T-shirt printed “Celebrating 35 Years; 1961-1996” on the front and “DECUS 35th ANNIVERSARY TOUR” on the back

What collectors find

Search under DEC, Digital and Digital Equipment, and under product names such as PDP, VAX and DECUS. The main categories are:

• User-group swag: DECUS buttons, shirts, proceedings and other society publications
• Employee and anniversary items: the museum holds Harlan Anderson’s circa 1960 name badge with the digital logo, a 1982 hat printed “Digital / 25 / 1957-1982” and a DECSIM T-shirt marked “COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL” on the back
• Product promotion: a VAX shirt with the Cheshire cat, a mug reading “LK 201 The Key To Success” and a button reading “I’ve been VAX-inated” are museum examples
• Manuals and marketing material: DEC produced manuals, sales literature, technical newsletters, journals and reports, and organized some of them into lending libraries for employees and other users
• Modules: DEC’s Flip Chip modules are circuit boards with a handle, marked “FLIP CHIP” on the board and carrying a model number such as M220 or M1701
• Merger-era pieces: a 1998 shirt printed “Digital Palo Alto June 17, 1998” on the front and “Digital Compaq” on the back carries both names

What to check before buying

Judge a DEC item by the object itself, its markings and the seller’s account of where it came from, and ask for close photographs before paying a premium.

• Markings: look for a DEC or digital logo with a product name, event name or date. Museum records also note the shirt blank’s maker, such as Hanes, Oneita or Lee. A label that fits the period supports a listing but does not prove it
• Later printing: a logo is easy to put on a new shirt or mug. Be cautious with a crisp print that has no period label, event name or account of its origin
• Later branding: many DEC technologies were sold under other branding after the merger, and HP sold products such as OpenVMS under its own name. A Compaq or HP item tied to a DEC product is a later corporate piece and should be priced as one
• Condition: the museum notes significant rust on a set of DEC promotional buttons and partly vanished lettering on a Digital mug. Check pin backs, mug printing, and shirt prints for cracking and fading
• Manuals and modules: confirm the title, revision and completeness of a manual, compare a module’s markings with the seller’s description, and have old hardware inspected before applying power
• Provenance: an employee or DECUS story adds context, but it should come with something checkable, such as an event name, a date or related paperwork

Museums and archives with DEC material

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, holds the Digital Equipment Corporation records, DEC’s corporate archive, given mostly by Hewlett-Packard in 2004. The collection runs to 1,239 linear feet and includes the papers of Olsen and Anderson, a DECUS records series, manuals, promotional and sales material, and a photo library of tens of thousands of original images. Its online finding aid lists each series with a date range, which helps place a manual or brochure in context.

The finding aid also points to Digital Equipment Computer Users Society proceedings and publications at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, and to Ken Olsen’s personal archives at the Ken Olsen Science Center, Gordon College. The museum’s online catalog describes the individual DEC and DECUS objects cited in this guide, which are useful comparisons for a listing.

Where to find DEC items now

DEC no longer exists, so there is no company store to visit. The Digital Equipment Corporation company page on I ♥ Capitalism collects live, relevance-checked resale listings and links each item to the marketplace selling it. Listings change as sellers add and remove items.