Here’s one entry that should fascinate young hackers, who think tech company extravagance was a invented by Google in the dotcom era, and exclusive to Silicon Valley:
> As the 1960s progressed, Digital's success found it expanding rapidly, but unable to find office space near its Maynard headquarters. They began purchasing additional campuses all around Boston & initiated their own dedicated helicopter service to ferry people between locations.
> …
> Jack Falvey reported, “The helicopters were not executive perks at DEC; they were used by any & all employees who wanted to avoid traffic in going from place to place.
> This egalitarian policy further emphasized just how different DEC was & how indifferent they appeared to be to the cost of anything.
> In doing [my] case study, we were told that DEC had state-of-the-art video-conferencing facilities that no one used because it was sexier to take the helicopters.”
Helicopter flight costs per passenger were much cheaper back then due to low oil prices, less stringent safety standards, and close to zero regulations regarding noise around helipads.
Maybe as little as a fifth of the cost, inflation adjusted, a similar heli service in 2023 would be.
So not as extravagant as it sounds in the modern context.
True. The 1960s ‘Massachusetts Helicopter Airlines’ flier included on that page indicates that a scheduled half hourly commercial helicopter service from Logan to 128 was charging $10 a ticket - that’s about $70 in today’s money, which, coincidentally, is about what an Uber from Logan to 128 will cost you.
So in terms of extravagance I guess running your own inter-office helicopter service in the 1960s amounts to something similar to running an on demand ride service today. Not ridiculous for a multi campus company to consider doing such a thing.
That said, DEC apparently kept this helicopter thing running right up to the 1990s, through a couple of oil shocks and the invention of the EPA, so… not sure it remained that cheap to run.
> That said, DEC apparently kept this helicopter thing running right up to the 1990s, through a couple of oil shocks and the invention of the EPA, so… not sure it remained that cheap to run.
"First hit's free!" was clearly the oil industry's strategy. Everyone became addicted to the mobility enabled by combustion engines. It's an addiction we're still struggling with to this day, despite the costs.
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/MA/Airfields_MA_NE.htm#dec
> As the 1960s progressed, Digital's success found it expanding rapidly, but unable to find office space near its Maynard headquarters. They began purchasing additional campuses all around Boston & initiated their own dedicated helicopter service to ferry people between locations.
> …
> Jack Falvey reported, “The helicopters were not executive perks at DEC; they were used by any & all employees who wanted to avoid traffic in going from place to place.
> This egalitarian policy further emphasized just how different DEC was & how indifferent they appeared to be to the cost of anything.
> In doing [my] case study, we were told that DEC had state-of-the-art video-conferencing facilities that no one used because it was sexier to take the helicopters.”