Artifact Details

Title

Supnik, Robert oral history, part 1 of 2

Catalog Number

102738263

Type

Document

Description

Robert Supnik was born and raised in New York and attended MIT on a National Merit Scholarship in 1964, majoring in math. He had developed a strong interest in computers before entering MIT and was eager to take any course that dealt with this budding passion. Unfortunately, there was no computer curriculum at the time, so he decided to pursue a double major in math and history.

While in school, he worked part time programming for an outside company, which eventually drew all his interest and time. He was working part time and then full time at Applied Data on a variety of different programs. This work eventually made him decide that computers was where his true passion lay.

The work at Applied Data eventually led to a 22 career at DEC from 1975 to 1999. While at DEC he worked on or supervised a wide range of programs, mainly involving multiple generations of VAX. His description of the details of these programs and DEC’s business and technical missteps is a wonderful tutorial and insight into how DEC went from being the 2nd largest computer company to being sold as scrap within a 10-year period.

Date

2017-05-02

Contributor

Hendrie, Gardner, Interviewer

Supnik, Robert M., Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Carlisle, MA

Extent

60 p.

Format

PDF

Subject

Dobberpuhl, Dan; PDP-11; LSI 11/23 (Computer); F-11; J-11; Kalb, Jeff; DEC; VAX; MicroVAX; UNISYS Corporation; UNIVAC; SiCortex; FairMarket; Nauticus Networks

Credit