The country's oldest institution of higher learning established roots in 1636. Since, eight United States presidents and more than 100 Nobel Prize winners have strolled through the ivy-laden gates of Harvard Yard, fueling the beginning of Boston's budding innovation economy—an economy MIT would step in 225 years later to help build.
The Institute's first building was constructed in the Back Bay, where MIT was known as "Boston Tech," until the campus crossed the Charles River in 1916.
Thirty years later, however, some of the schools' most powerful minds would meld. MIT President Karl Taylor Compton worked alongside Harvard Business School Professor Georges Doriot and Ralph Flanders, president of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, to found the first modern venture capital company, American Research and Development (ARD).
Doriot, known as the "grandfather of venture capital," became ARD's first president and made the firm's most successful investment in 1960. Doriot gave $70,000 to a young MIT researcher named Kenneth Olsen, who used the financing to launch Digital Equipment Corporation—a company that grew from three to 7,000 employees in just 12 years, second in size only to IBM.
Doriot is the same man who, with the help of ARD, paved the way for the Route 128 technology cluster, first recognized by BusinessWeek in 1955. The stretch of highway became home to a Polaroid plant in 1954 and Raytheon's headquarters, first in 1941 and again in 2003.
Those milestones mark only the beginning of Boston's history, however.
In September, we introduced the "Boston Tech Timeline," a visual representation of the tech scene's history, highlighting the various founding stories, financings, IPOs, acquisitions and transitions that have made the city what it is today.
To create the Tech Timeline, we want to hear from the community who helped build Boston's innovation economy: What milestones do you think have defined Boston's tech scene over the decades?
We'll be spotlighting input over the next month via various posts, and transforming it into a visual representation of where we started and how far we've come. So, submit your thoughts below if you would like to be included in our upcoming content.
Featured Photo Courtesy of Boston Kayak Guy
