Item Details

Description

This subseries is the largest of the DEC Photo Library, containing the most complete run of the library's original file numbers. The majority of these files only contain negatives—both color and black and white—though in some cases there are prints, contact sheets, trial proofs, and/or transparencies filed with their corresponding negatives. As the DEC Photo Library file numbers point to the same photographic content across subseries, the subjects of the images in this subseries correspond to those in subseries 21.1, 21.2, 21.3, 21.5, and 21.6 -- though the format is different and there is more of a comprehensive run in this subseries. This subseries holds some of the earliest images of the photo library, with photographs documenting design and manufacturing processes in DEC's laboratories, system and lab modules, and early versions of the PDP-1. Some of the images that only exist in this subseries depict equipment on pallets being prepared for shipping to different clients (e.g., “PDP-8/I and PDP-8/L in shipping area”). This subseries also contains a significant amount of screen shots, or “scope shots” in some of the earlier files, that show DEC software interfaces as they appeared to users. Many of the files dated in the 1960s document early PDP models. Some of these PDP-related files are titled with a second number after the name of the PDP, which indicates that specific system's manufacturing number in relation to others of the same model. For example, a file titled “PDP-8-21” indicates that the images in that file show the twenty-first PDP-8 made. Similarly, a file titled “PDP-4-1” would mean that the images in that file depict the first PDP-4 ever made. Many of the envelopes that DEC used to house these negatives were empty of contents. The file numbers for these empty envelopes were not cataloged, though a list was kept of which file numbers had empty envelopes. This list is attached to the acquisition record for X2675.2004. Early files—dated in the early 1960s—that were marked “Personnel file” in the photo library's logbook were often emptied of negatives. However, most of the personnel files that appeared later in this subseries' sequence of file numbers did contain photographs. Images in these personnel-related files include depictions of DEC's staff events, bowling leagues, awards ceremonies, group shots of training classes, and collections of employee identification photographs. Many aspects of DEC's corporate culture are represented in these negatives. DEC's “Digital Computer Museum” as it existed in Marlborough, and later its “Computer Museum” in Boston, are also pictured in some of these negatives. This subseries is arranged by the DEC Photo Library's file numbers, which are mostly chronological.

Level of description

Item

Date

1957-1998

Collection title

Digital Equipment Corporation records

Catalogue number

600001007