Computer History Museum

Solhjell, Erik oral history

his oral history interview captures the five-decade career of Erik Solhjell, a key figure in tape storage technology who helped pioneer innovations that shaped the industry from the 1970s through the 2000s. Solhjell's career at Tandberg and its successor companies parallels the evolution of tape storage from 20 megabytes to 2 terabytes. The interview was recorded at Solhjell's summer home in Larvik, Norway As one of the founding members of the Quarter-Inch Cartridge (QIC) standards committee, Solhjell played a crucial role in establishing industry standards that created interoperability among tape drives from competing manufacturers. His technical innovations include streaming tape technology, which dramatically improved tape drive efficiency by eliminating start-stop operations, and edge-seeking technology, which significantly improved track positioning accuracy. Under Solhjell's technical and later executive leadership, Tandberg secured major OEM contracts with IBM, Compaq, and other industry leaders, at one point capturing 28% of the half-height LTO drive market. His engineering teams successfully transitioned from QIC technology to Linear Tape-Open (LTO) standards as storage needs evolved. The narrative captures the business challenges of competing in the global storage marketplace, the importance of cross-company collaboration through standards organizations, and the tensions between technical innovation and financial management. Solhjell's career illustrates how a relatively small Norwegian technology company maintained global competitiveness through technical excellence and innovation, ultimately shipping millions of tape drives that provided critical data backup capabilities for global computing infrastructure.