Who Remembers the VAX Minicomputer, Icon of the 1980s? (original) (raw)

Gather ‘round and listen to a tale from olden times, when a “mini” computer was as big as a refrigerator. When the world’s second-biggest computer company was headquartered in a former woollen mill in eastern Massachusetts. And when Kenneth Olsen, that company’s co-founder, told BusinessWeek magazine, “The personal computer will fall flat on its face in business.”

We’re talking about the 1980s. The company is (or rather, was) Digital Equipment Corp. of Maynard, Mass., and the extremely successful minicomputer line was the VAX. I found myself reminiscing about the VAX because the word, now in lower case, has come to mean something very different—vaccine, as in “anti-vaxxer.” Time races on and we forget the greats of the past.