Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

Digital Equipment Corporation, also known as DEC and using the trademark DIGITAL, was a major American company in the computer industry. It was a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s, with its PDP and VAX products were the most successful (in terms of sales) minicomputers. From 1957 until 1992 its headquarters was located in a former wool mill at Clock Tower Place, Maynard, Massachusetts. DEC was acquired in June 1998 by Compaq, which subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002. Some parts of DEC, notably the compiler business and the Hudson, Massachusetts facility, were sold to Intel. Digital Equipment Corporation should not be confused with the unrelated companies Digital Research, Inc or Western Digital, although the latter manufactured the LSI-11 chipsets used in DEC's low end PDP-11/03 computers.