"An inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur, Ken Olsen is one of the real pioneers in the computer industry," wrote Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, in a letter to Gordon College, the institution where the final Olsen served until his death. "He is also a very influential person in my life and its influence is still important at Microsoft through the engineers who were trained in digital and come here to make great software products," said Bill Gates five years ago when Ken Olsen Science Center building.
Olsen is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was there that he joined the air defense technology development team and the memory which then became the forerunner of RAM (random access memory). In 1957, he founded the DEC which grew into a company with 125,000 employees in 86 countries. However, in the 1990's usahnya continued to decline because of failing to anticipate changes in trend and eventually personal computers Compaq acquired DEC in 1998 worth 9.6 billion U.S. dollars.
In 1986, Fortune magazine put it in the list of most influential entrepreneurs in American business history. His name is also recorded in the National Inventor's Hall of fame in 1990 and the Computer History Museum in 1996 and get a National Medal of Technology in 1993.
