Category: Tech

DG and Me

The computer terminals in Severance were based on the Data General Dasher.

The minicomputer industry was created at Ken Olsen’s company, Digital Equipment Corporation. Digital, also known as DEC (pronounced “deck”), dominated the industry for its entire 40-year existence.

Data General was started by former DEC engineers, most notably Ed de Castro, who was CEO for its first twenty years. He was followed by Ronald Skates for DG’s final ten years.

My father worked at DG for almost ten years. My first exposure to the company was in 1976, when visiting Dad there during my junior year of college.

Five years after that visit to Westborough, I was starting a new job and working on both DEC and DG systems. That was the same year Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Soul of a New Machine appeared. It told the story of how DG developed its 32-bit system, called the MV-series. I bought a copy as soon as it was out in paperback.

The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder, 1981 “Soon A Major Motion Picture“

The Soul of ‘The Soul a New Machine’

DG was a perennially distant second cousin to DEC in every way, right down to its circuit boards. Where DEC’s boards were beautifully fabricated, DG’s often had patch wires with solder splash. With the exception of a couple guys I worked with, DG’s field engineers didn’t have the same level of training and skill as DEC’s FE’s. They certainly weren’t as well equipped.

An unexpected and pleasant assignment I once had was assisting de Castro’s girlfriend Eileen (later his second wife) for a couple of days. Closer to my age than to Ed’s, she was bright, personable and unpretentious. My immediate thought was she must have had a marketing background. I helped her get an early DG laptop computer up and running and we put it through its paces for a presentation she was preparing.

Every so often I have checked to see if de Castro was still alive. During my recovery from cancer treatments I missed spotting his obituary. (I’m saddened to see that Eileen passed away a year ago. She was only three months older than myself, and I was right about her marketing background.)

https://www.chiampafuneralhome.com/obituaries/Edson-Donald-De-Castro?obId=33029648

The nadir of my association with DG came in 1994. The DG sales rep for my employer, a guy named Peter, tried to get me fired. Five years later he had to scramble to stay on board after EMC took over. Here is the long, painful story as was told on LinkedIn, without mentioning DG.

Continue reading DG and Me

Land’s End

January, 1969: Polaroid photo of me with Greg, my best pal at the time, in Norwalk, Connecticut

The latest installment of American Experience explores the hits and misses of Polaroid’s inventor-founder Edwin Land.

Watching the documentary, as the timeline progresses it becomes obvious that Land was stuck in the mindset of photography as a chemical process. So was Kodak for that matter, despite having conducted the first tests of digital photography.

My most significant takeaway from ‘Mr. Polaroid’ was learning about Meroë Morse. While saying that, “of course he loved his wife and two daughters,” the point is made that Land was “married to his work,” which included Morse for almost 25 years.

It’s easy to infer that Land’s feelings for Morse went beyond her being a highly competent and trusted colleague who made significant contributions to the company’s success. In contrast to Land’s deadpan expression in his Polaroid photos, Meroë shines in this attractive test photo.

Meroë Morse

It would be a stretch to say that Polaroid’s decline began with Morse’s untimely death in 1969, but not that much of a stretch. Edwin Land isn’t alone as a Boston CEO who was as responsible for his company’s demise as he was its past success. Other CEO’s of failed technology companies include DEC founder Ken Olsen, DG’s Edson de Castro, and An Wang at his namesake company, Wang Laboratories.

Twelve years after the death of Amar Bose, his namesake company is still in business. So he’s an exception to the Boston rule, with a caveat. Bose sank an estimated billion dollars into a pet project that ultimately went nowhere. After its founder’s death, the company sold off the technology.

https://www.extremetech.com/cars/259042-bose-sells-off-revolutionary-electromagnetic-suspension

Prattman Cave

I’m on a tear, reorganizing my office and the space that I suppose should be called the media room. Going through many long-buried things, I was reminded that I used to make DVDs.

Remember when the music and movie industries were so concerned about recordable media? They were convinced that people burning their own CDs and DVDs would destroy their businesses forever. Now, they couldn’t care less about physical media.