Latest news with #DigitalEquipmentCorporation
The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Former Volvo chief says individualism is holding Scotland back
"Rather than inspire new thinking, we have to some extent romanticised this," he told the Creating the Jobs of Tomorrow conference in Glasgow. "The constant recycling of these great achievements risks being akin to having a picture of Bonnie Prince Charlie on the side of a biscuit tin. "It is now time for the next chapter in Scottish innovation to be written," he added, noting that the means are available to develop a highly-skilled workforce that will dictate which countries fare best economically in the years to come. Read more: 'We need to educate young people not just in the technical tools and the business skills of tomorrow, but the basic building blocks of how to work effectively together to build a culture of shared prosperity," he said. "Individualism, digital nomads, scrolling as a form of entertainment [and] working from home has all torn the fabric in the cultural collaboration, and we need to amend this.' Originally a mechanical engineering apprentice at Tate & Lyle in Glasgow, Mr Rowan switched into the technology sector when he joined Digital Equipment Corporation in Ayr in 1986. He went on to hold chief operating officer roles at both BlackBerry and Dyson, and was chief executive of Dyson from 2017 to 2020. Despite all the current geopolitical turbulence and uncertainty, he said it remains his firm belief that "fantastic opportunities" lie ahead for companies and countries that find ways to invest in the key talents and technologies of the future. 'The combination of high computational silicon, artificial intelligence, low latency cloud connectivity and energy security will provide the foundations to accelerate growth and prosperity we have never seen before," Mr Rowan said. "I would go as far as to say that what happens in the next five years will define the industrial and the military landscape for the next 25 years.' Mr Rowan added that this constitutes a "potent cocktail" designed to Scotland's advantage that can enable a "new wave of prosperity for our country". 'To bring this vision alive, we need to be able to get our young talent to embrace these opportunities and engage in the journey, a journey that can create something long-lasting and future-proof for the next generation," he said, but added: "Many of our young people today are out of practice with what it takes to be successful on the global stage."
BBC News
17-03-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Reading exhibition celebrates the birth of 'Tech Town'
An exhibition marking the diamond jubilee of the birth of Britain's own Silicon Valley is taking place in computing firm Digital Equipment Corporation set up shop, quite literally, above a furniture store in the town in arrival began the transformation of Reading's economy, from one based around "beer, bulbs and biscuits" to bytes, as it switched from reliance on the brewing industry, biscuit making and horticulture and became the UK's first "Tech Town". The exhibition will tell the story of how in the years since, Reading has become home to the UK headquarters of global brands from Miscrosoft to Chinese Telecoms giant Huawei. "1964 was pivotal in Reading's history," says exhibition curator Brendan Carr. After starting out with just two employees, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) grew "extraordinarily quickly" and within 15 years was employing 2,000 firms quickly followed Carr says: "Today Reading is at the heart of on of the biggest ICT clusters in the UK with over 11,000 tech-related businesses in the area and something like 12% of the local population is involved in this industry." As DEC grew rapidly, the company took over buildings across the Salmon joined as an engineer straight from University in like him worked in what he described as a "garden shed", away from the executives and sales team in the town centre."Computers were a mystery to an awful lot of people in those days," he explains. "I really liked to be hands on and design things, so it was a great job for me."DEC, or "digital" as it sold itself to customers, was one of the companies leading the way with mini computers. These were large affairs compared to today's laptops and tablets - let alone smart phones. But they were still a huge advance on what had gone before, like the huge machine pictured in the exhibition being lifted, by crane, into place at Berkshire County Council's Shire Hall, around the time DEC arrived in the town. DEC was historically number two to IBM, but "being the underdog" was what attracted Shaheed Haque to them when he graduated from Oxford at the turn of the 1980s."One of the things that was really cool about them, was that they didn't require you to wear a suit," he recalls."It was just so much fun. For years I would hear people talk about the misery of their working life and I was so spoilt by the environment at DEC."The exhibition features some of DEC's products, many on loan from the National Museum of Computing at them is equipment from the nearby Atomic Weapons Establishment, just a few miles outside Reading. Computers played a huge role in the design of the UK's nuclear warheads and, following a ban on test detonations, took on the role of simulating how they would behave. Although they moved into desktop PCs, by the late 1990s DEC was in trouble. The business was taken over by Compaq, which in turn became part of Hewlett Packard, which remains in Reading to this of the sites they had bought during their expansion - on land once owned by Sutton's Seeds, the bulbs part of Reading's economic past - is now home to Microsoft."We are living through this digital revolution, which is 60 or 70 years old," says curator Brendan Carr. "It's still unfolding and getting faster and faster." You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
