Main Image: A visitor reading a timeline, which explains how, from the establishment of DEC in Reading in 1964, the town became central to the digitisation of daily life in Britain. Photograph by AIT
Reading Museum has launched an exhibition to celebrate and chart the rise of the town’s technology industry, with its success resulting in it being referred to as the UK’s ‘Silicon Valley’.
Reading’s DIGITAL Revolution, which opens today (18 March), explores the story of the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) opening a UK headquarters in Reading in 1964 and the influence of the technology industry on the town’s past, present and future.
From bingo hall to digital hub
John Leng, now 90, who travelled from Arizona for the exhibition opening, established DEC’s first UK office in a disused bingo hall above a furniture shop with just two employees and within 15 years it had a workforce of more than 2,000. He told AIT: “We were at the forefront of digital technology and it was very exciting. If I were starting out today, I would be working in Quantum Computing.”
DEC was founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson, two engineers who had been working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in Massachusetts in 1957. DEC became known for its pioneering design and production of the minicomputer through its PDP line. By 1988 it was named the second largest computer company in the world. DEC was acquired in 1998 by Compaq, in what was at that time the largest merger in the history of the computer industry.
The Museum said the establishment of DEC in Reading was ‘a moment that would redefine the future of our town and region’.
Since 1964 Reading, the UK’s first ‘tech town’, has evolved into one of the largest tech clusters in the UK. Today more than 11,000 ICT businesses call the greater Reading area home including the UK headquarters of global brands such as Microsoft and Chinese Telecoms giant Huawei.
AIT to host project’s oral history interviews
As part of the DIGITAL Revolution project, which began in 2023, 31 oral history interviews have been conducted with pioneers from DEC by Gavin Clarke and his team at Blended Past. These not only feature in the exhibition but will be shared and interpreted on the AIT website and YouTube channel, with the museum recognising AIT’s significant role in preserving the heritage of the UK’s IT sector nationally.
Archives of IT CEO Tola Sargeant said: “We are delighted to be giving the exhibition’s interviews with DEC’s inspiring pioneers a ‘forever home’ in our archive, ensuring they are available for future generations to study and enjoy.”
Brendan Carr, Community Engagement Curator at Reading Museum, said it is a really important element of the project to capture the stories of the people who were there and describe how the tech industry in Reading was born and grew.
“Tech can be a forward-looking industry, but we felt there was a need to tell that story of what happened in the 1960s in the words of these interesting characters before they are lost,” he said. “I believe they will be very interesting to future historians of digital history in the UK and we are delighted to have been able to broker a relationship with AIT for the widespread dissemination of these extremely important testimonies.”
‘We were given free range to work’
One of the interviewees for the exhibition was former DEC employee, Ken Salmon, who graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in computer science and started out as a trainee design engineer at DEC in 1974 and rose to project manager before leaving in 1980.
“We had DEC computers at university, so it was a no-brainer I’d work for them. I worked on the PDP-11 [16-bit computers sold by DEC] and those six years were fantastic, the best of my career (although it didn’t pay well). We were given free-range to work, we had a common kin type of culture. I think it’s fantastic that the museum has realised this story is worth celebrating and I’m very proud to be part of it.”
Funding and partnership
The exhibition was funded by a grant of £87,145 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and hosted in partnership with National Museum of Computing. It follows a community display at the museum in 2024, which coincided with the National Museum of Computing’s DEC anniversary exhibition, Digital Britain: The Road from Reading.
Reading’s DIGITAL Revolution exhibition is free to visit and runs until 24 December 2025.