At times DEC we innovative in ways that no hardware company 
today even comes close. But I guess innovation and commercial 
success do not go hand in hand. OK, this is abridged from 
Wikipedia, but much of it is true...

Digital supported/developed the ANSI standards, especially the 
ASCII and multinational character sets.

The first versions of the C language and the Unix operating 
system ran on Digital's PDP series of computers

Digital produced the first pure 64-bit microprocessor, 
AlphAXP.

Digital collaborated on the Ethernet standard and made the 
commercially success it is today.

Digital, though their Hierarchical Storage Controllers, 
delivered the first hardware RAID.

Digital was the primary sponsor for the X Window System 
project (project Athena).

Digital was one of the first businesses connected to the 
Internet with dec.com, registered in 1985, being one of the 
very first .com domains. Digital was also the first computer 
vendor to open a public website, on October 1, 1993. 
AltaVista, created by Digital, was one of the first 
comprehensive Internet search engines. (Although Lycos was 
earlier, it was much more limited.)

DEC invented Digital Linear Tape (DLT) which was so much more 
reliable than helical scan technologies such as DAT.

Digital were even developing the forerunner of the iPod (a 
hard-disk based MP3 player) back in 1998 before the merger 
with Compaq.


Regards,
Robert

--

Dr. Robert Esnouf,
University Research Lecturer
and Head of Research Computing,
Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics,
Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7BN, UK

Emails: rob...@strubi.ox.ac.uk   Tel: (+44) - 1865 - 287783
    and rob...@esnouf.com        Fax: (+44) - 1865 - 287547

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