As a newly graduated computer scientist, my own backyard was full of companies to go to work for - Data General, Wang, DEC, Apollo, and others. These companies were booming and were gobbling up my classmates. Living in New Hampshire, I chose DEC and landed at the Spit Brook road facility that included the famous ZK1, ZK2 and ZK3 buildings.
I traveled to California, Vegas, even Valbonne France as Digital grew and grew. I sat next to seasoned consulting engineers that knew how to build fantastic software. I learned. I saw the creation of computer graphics via DECWindows based on the X Windows framework and later to Motif. I was hooked with UI design. I originally worked on DECPlan (basically Microsoft Project before there was a Microsoft) and to this day, it had features that no project management system has.
Mid-90's....the downturn starts. Competition heats up, the PC is born, Wang starts to collapse, DEC has layoffs and salary freezes, change is brewing. After 10 years, it's time to move on. There's some new up and coming companies called Cabletron, Wellfleet, Cisco out there that are the next big things.
And so, some 25 years after beginning in ZK3, I have returned to Spit Brook road. It's no longer one company...the buildings have been updated, carved up to house numerous companies. I recently took a walk to some of the uninhabited floors and areas. I found a conference room with some very interesting information printed on the wall:
The list of VMS features spanned from BL5 (which boasted 100 customers) all the way to version 5.0. It was almost eerie.....like the engineers had just packed up and left and now only dust was living here.
The buildings have also undergone some cosmetic changes as well. All the entrances have been redone, the heated outside tile gone, and a more engineered entrance in place.
The interior hallways have new carpet, and a new paint scheme with more modern lighting.
A piece of DEC history has also been restored. Many old timers will remember the barcode on the entrance to ZK2, where the main entrance and credit union used to be. It spelled out Digital Software Engineering at some point and has long been removed. But this past summer, this showed up on the cafeteria wall:
With a plaque that reminded everyone of the barcode DEC used to have and that this new barcode, in the spirit of the original one, spells out Nashua Tech Park.
In my travels about the buildings, I found a three ring binder with a Digital logo on it. I've put some of my Plexxi documents into it. There's good karma in these buildings. Maybe the next big thing is coming from this historic location. You CAN go home again.
