DEC Founder Said Nobody Would Want a Computer at Home. His Company Was Bought by a PC Maker.

Ken Olsen built DEC into the second-largest computer company in America, a minicomputer giant worth $14 billion at its peak. So when he dismissed personal computers as pointless in 1977, people listened. The quote was reportedly meant to focus his workforce on DEC's bread-and-butter mainframes rather than those silly little hobby machines. One problem: those "silly little machines" became the future. By the 1990s, DEC was hemorrhaging money while PC makers thrived. In 1998, the ultimate irony arrived: Compaq — a company that existed solely because people wanted computers in their homes — acquired DEC for $9.6 billion. Today, the average American household has more computing power in a single smartphone than DEC's entire product line had in 1977. Approximately 92% of U.S. households now own a computer. No reason indeed.