The Ephemeral Nature Of Tech
In Chelmsford, Massachusetts there is a short stretch of road near the highway that features a string of (as of this writing) abandoned office buildings. These buildings were built in the early 1980’s and have had various tenants over the years, but the vacancy rate eventually grew to the point where the whole area is now unoccupied.
Recent trends away from monolithic office parks towards mixed-use areas with more retail and residential space nearby lured away most of the businesses there to newer developments in the late 2010’s, and the great migration out of the office to the home in 2020 has not helped with re-leasing any of these properties.
The original constructor of these buildings however was a company called Apollo Computer. Apollo was a player in the great minicomputer (and later workstation) boom era of the 1970’s and 1980’s. This was a period of time that saw a number of companies flourish, including Digital Equipment Corporation ( a former employer of mine which I have written about before), Data General, and Wang Computer. These companies experienced amazing growth and profitability during their runs, and battled each other for global dominance in the business technology market.
All of them without exception are dead now, and for the most part, forgotten. Apollo especially so, because it was really only a minor player in the early workstation scene, and had an under-ten-year run of independent existence (1980-1989) before being bought by Hewlett Packard. HP kept the Apollo workstation line for a number of years before completely abandoning it, and nothing really remains of Apollo now.
