Richard "Dick" Irvin Hustvedt (February 18, 1946 – April 15, 2008) was a renowned

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

, designer and developer of several operating systems including

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

RSX-11 RSX-11 is a discontinued family of multi-user real-time operating systems for PDP-11 computers created by Digital Equipment Corporation. In widespread use through the late 1970s and early 1980s, RSX-11 was influential in the development of later ...

, and VMS.

Personal history

Hustvedt was born in

Aberdeen, South Dakota Aberdeen () is a city in and the county seat of Brown County, South Dakota, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population was 28,495. making it the third-most populous city in the state. Aberdeen is home of Northern State University. ...

and grew up in Radcliff, Kentucky, home of

Fort Knox Fort Knox is a United States Army installation in Kentucky, south of Louisville and north of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Elizabethtown. It is adjacent to the United States Bullion Depository (also known as Fort Knox), which is used to house a larg ...

. He attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

studying

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

and was later employed by the Army Security Agency. Following the ASA, Dick worked for the

Xerox Corporation Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduction of the Xerox ...

on the development of operating systems for their Data Systems division (Xerox DSD Development Programming in

El Segundo, California El Segundo ( , ; ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located on Santa Monica Bay, it was incorporated on January 18, 1917, and is part of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments. The population was 17,272 as of t ...

), and was a principal kernel developer of the Xerox Data Systems (XDS) RAD-75, RBM-1 and CP-V operating systems. He was recruited by Ken Olsen to join

(DEC) in 1974. He moved from

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

Concord, Massachusetts Concord () is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. In the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the town population was 18,491. The United States Census Bureau considers Concord part of Greater Boston. The town center is n ...

where he worked at the company headquarters at "The Mill" in Maynard, Massachusetts. Married to Audrey R. Reith (1936?-2024) in 1976. Father of sons Eric Hustvedt (1978) and Marc Hustvedt (1979). On January 13, 1984, he suffered a severe head injury in an automobile accident in

Acton, Massachusetts Acton is a New England town, town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, approximately west-northwest of Boston, Massachusetts, Boston along Massachusetts Route 2 west of Concord, Massachusetts, Concord and about southwest of Lowell ...

. He resided in

New Hampshire New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

at the time of his death on April 15, 2008. The VAX/VMS development team, now

OpenVMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Op ...

and part of

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

, named a conference room in his honor in

Nashua, New Hampshire Nashua () is a city in southern New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it had a population of 91,322, the second-largest in northern New England after nearby Manchester, New Hampshire, Manchester. It is on ...

facility.

DEC

Dick Hustvedt was one of the three principal designers of VMS, along with Dave Cutler and Peter Lipman. VMS was first conceived in 1976 as the operating system for the

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

virtual memory In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage, is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a ver ...

line of computers eventually named

VAX VAX (an acronym for virtual address extension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...

. Version V1.0 shipped in 1978 and the VAX and VMS became flagship products for DEC. Hustvedt was also the driving force behind the development of DEC's VAXcluster, which was the first clustering system to achieve commercial success, and was a major selling point for VAX systems. His sense of humor is behind the fact that the TIMEPROMPTWAIT variable in VMS is famously defined in "microfortnights".

References

"Nothing Stops It: VAX OpenVMS at 20"
* "DEC used by Digital itself:" ''PDP11 Processor Handbook'' (1973): p. 8, "DEC, PDP, UNIBUS are registered trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation;" pp. 1–4, "Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) designs and manufacturers many of the peripheral devices offered with PDP-11's. As a designer and manufacturer of peripherals, DEC can offer extremely reliable equipment... The LA30 DECwriter, a totally DEC-designed and built teleprinter, can serve as an alternative to the Teletype." * Edgar H. Schein, Peter S. DeLisi, Paul J. Kampas, and Michael M. Sonduck, ''DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation'' (San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler, 2003), . * "VAX-11" 1st Edition - Dick Hustvedt, 1975 19- Stanford

External links

Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story

Nothing Stops It: VAX OpenVMS at 20

Dick Hustvedt, the consummate software engineer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hustvedt, Dick 1946 births 2008 deaths People from Aberdeen, South Dakota People from Radcliff, Kentucky American computer scientists Kernel programmers