26 Nov
2019
26 Nov
'19
7:16 p.m.
Good point.
Some companies that COULD HAVE been the leaders made great inventions
and/or engineering, and then fumbled the marketing.
I'm thinking that Xerox Parc could be said to have "invented" the next
generation of personal computers, but did they ever cash in on that?
I can visualize a Apple/Microsoft argument, "But we stole it FIRST!"
(like English/French/Spanish in America)
On Tue, 26 Nov 2019, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
I would make a strong argument that DEC invented the
PC: Twice actually. The
PDT11/150 is a pretty amazing system: 64k of memory, serial port, printer
port, RT11 operating system and if I recall correctly someone wrote a version
of Visicalc and a nice word processor on it as a demonstration.
Unfortunately Dec saw that such a system would cannibalize their sales of
pdp11 computers and sold the damn thing as a communication controller. Sad
beyond belief.
They did it again with the Pro/350: A system that had integrated graphics,
512k of memory, dual floppies and a hard disk, easy to install card options
(Ethernet, TMS, etc) and of course a real time multi-program operating system
and (with Synergy) a fairly neat GUI.
Unfortunately Dec saw that such a system would cannibalize their sales of pdp
and vax computers and crippled the living daylights out of it. Ultimately
selling it as a front-end processor. Sad beyond belief.
It wasn't just having the technology, it was having it and knowing how to
market it. You need both to make a good product and DEC really was all about
protecting their current market share (which is insane as they came to be by
exploiting a niche in the computer industry).
Oh well.
CZ