That's the name of the guy! Stan Olson . . . the fellows at that one pitch
to which I was referring in my original post on this subject were touting
Stan Olson as being so cagey that he kept the gov out of the company's books
by selling his wares to the gov through integration contractors so that the
folks at the gov could specify DEC without naming them, and the various
competing contractors would always decode the RFP to mean DEC and so DEC
would win every time. I thought it was clever, if true, but the genius's
name was Stan Olson.
I worked for a while at a major Government Agency which shall remain
nameless . . . Every time I called one of my colleagues to leave a message,
his lab partner would ask "are you from Digital?" I interpreted this as
being digital, since we were digital systems group in the organization in
question, and answered with a resounding YES, being new and underinformed as
to the culture. One day at lunch the matter happened to come up and that's
when I found out the message my colleague was receiving was causing him to
call the DEC salesman. Too bad we haven't a way of pronouncing the case of
a letter so people will understand.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Pechter <pechter(a)pechter.dyndns.org>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Friday, April 23, 1999 9:34 PM
Subject: Re: DEC
> I have a manual for PrintDirecter put out by
Digital Products Inc-"the
sub-Lan
Company"
of Watertown, Ma. Was this a division of DEC ? I know there were
several companies with Digital in their name.
Digital was a bad name... too often used and too generic.
Too bad K.O. didn't allow the company to do business as DEC.
I believe Stan Olson was in favor of this at one time.
Nah... the great story is people coming to the DEC facility in
Nashua to get their DIGITAL clocks and watches fixed.
Bill
---
bpechter@shell.monmouth.com|pechter@pechter.dyndns.org
Three things never anger: First, the one who runs your DEC,
The one who does Field Service and the one who signs your check.