Artifact Details

Title

McKinney, Webb oral history

Catalog Number

102654051

Type

Document

Description

Webb McKinney was an executive in Hewlett Packard over many years and involved in various efforts to build software to run on HP instruments, specialized equipment and eventually on minicomputers and personal computers. His recollections illustrate how the decentralized operation of many of the HP products led to multiple developments of both minicomputers and personal computers with conflicting architectures and business models. While these competing technologies would get resolved over time, HP was often late to market and never really focused its computer software on the broad personal usage market. HP wanted to differentiate its hardware platforms through its unique software, but the market migrated to a Microsoft Windows platform and neither the customers nor the software producers were prepared to go a separate route.

Date

2008-06-04

Contributor

Mahoney, Michael, Interviewer
McKinney, Webb, Interviewee
Rawlings, Nicholas, Editor

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

30

Format

PDF

Category

Transcription

Subject

McKinney, Webb; Apple; CompUSA; Corel; Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC); DEC Rainbow; DEC Professional; Ely, Paul; Frankenberg, Bob; Gates, Bill; General Radio; Hackborn, Dick; Hewlett Packard (HP); International Business Machines Corporation (IBM); Kahn, Philippe; Lotus Development Corporation; Micrographics; Microsoft; Norton Desktop for Windows; Olsen, Ken; Open Mail; Phoenix Technologies; Sakakihara, Phil; SDRC (Structural Dynamics Research Corporation); Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI); Time/Data; Vectra; WordPerfect; Yansouni, Cyril; Young, John

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Credit

Software History Center

Lot Number

X4701.2008