People

We had a dream of interactive computing. Normal computing was considered big, expensive, awesome, beyond ordinary people. Interactive computing was exciting and fun, and people could interact directly with the computer. Ken Olsen, co-founder of DEC

Unlike a generation of computers before it, the PDP-1 was centered around the user and it was the engineers, researchers, students and hackers from a variety of organizations and companies that brought Olsen’s vision of the PDP-1 to life. These people and the machine they created went on to have wide influence.

This section highlights the people who developed or influenced the PDP-1, including some of its earliest users. Other users and applications are covered in the “Applications” section.