Ken Olsen

Bridgeport, Connecticut  native Ken Olsen was on an Admiral’s Staff  during World War II in the Navy. After a brief stint at General Electric after the war, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

There he was involved in MIT’s Whirlwind Computer under Jay Forrester to improve real time information for the United States Military after the Russians set of their first nuclear bomb. He then went on to work with one of the first computers to use transistors.

In 1957 Olsen and Harlan Anderson started Digital Equipment Corporation with money supplied by Georges Doriot’s venture capital. They started out making computers for engineers and scientists and eventually moved into producing computers that would be used by  private industry. He is credited with creating the mini computer and advancing computer networking.