Digital Equipment Corporation opened its Galway factory in 1971. The well-paid jobs it offered, the way it treated its employees, and the opportunities it provided for personal development and career advancement, were unprecedented in Ireland at the time. At its peak, Digital employed over 1,200 people in Galway. The city, and the country, was rocked when the news broke in 1993 that Digital was to cease hardware manufacturing in Galway and over 700 people were to lose their jobs. In many ways, this cataclysmic event turned out to be not an end but a beginning for many people who used the knowledge and experience they gained at Digital to launch successful careers and businesses in Galway and elsewhere.
After the hardware closure, Digital continued to operate its European Software Centre in Galway. That business is still thriving today after multiple changes of ownership – Compaq in 1998, Hewlett Packard in 2002, then the 2017 split into HPE, Microfocus and DXC Technology. Even today, in 2024, some of the 700+ employees at these companies have been with them since the Digital era.
A lot of people still remember and value the friendships they made at Digital in Galway. Reunion events over the years have been well-attended. The main purpose of this website is collect photos from those events, and a lot more, in a single place. Secondary purposes include helping people to get back in touch, and communicating information that might be of interest to former employees of the great company that was Digital Equipment Corporation.
Notes about the website
The website currently contains over 1600 images. It’s a work in progress and we’ll be adding more images, as well as names and dates for existing images, as time goes on.
If you’ve got photos or other information you’d like to share, please send it to us and we will upload it.
We have scaled down some images to better fit the medium of the web, but if you’d like a higher resolution version of an image for printing, we’d be happy to send it to you if we have it.
If you see an image you’d prefer we didn’t publish, let us know and we will remove it.
Through organising various events over the years, we have an extensive contact list of ex-Digital employees. If you want to get in touch with someone, we might be able to help. However, please don’t ask for the full list.
If you’d like to join the mailing list to be kept informed of future events, please contact us.
design by frankcommunication.ie
About this website
Digital Equipment Corporation opened its Galway factory in 1971. The well-paid jobs it offered, the way it treated its employees, and the opportunities it provided for personal development and career advancement, were unprecedented in Ireland at the time. At its peak, Digital employed over 1,200 people in Galway. The city, and the country, was rocked when the news broke in 1993 that Digital was to cease hardware manufacturing in Galway and over 700 people were to lose their jobs. In many ways, this cataclysmic event turned out to be not an end but a beginning for many people who used the knowledge and experience they gained at Digital to launch successful careers and businesses in Galway and elsewhere.
After the hardware closure, Digital continued to operate its European Software Centre in Galway. That business is still thriving today after multiple changes of ownership – Compaq in 1998, Hewlett Packard in 2002, then the 2017 split into HPE, Microfocus and DXC Technology. Even today, in 2024, some of the 700+ employees at these companies have been with them since the Digital era.
A lot of people still remember and value the friendships they made at Digital in Galway. Reunion events over the years have been well-attended. The main purpose of this website is collect photos from those events, and a lot more, in a single place. Secondary purposes include helping people to get back in touch, and communicating information that might be of interest to former employees of the great company that was Digital Equipment Corporation.
Notes about the website