Sun Microsystems Spotlight

Sun Microsystems was founded in 1982 by Andreas Bechtolsheim, an electrical engineering PhD student in the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL), Scott McNealy and Vinod Khosla, roommates at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and Bill Joy, a PhD student in computer science at the University of Califomia, Berkeley.

Sun's first product was the brainchild of Bechtolsheim. He built his first workstation out of spare parts scrounged from the Department of Computer Science and Silicon Valley supply houses. In 1982, he teamed with McNealy, Khosla and Joy to found Sun which is an acronym for Stanford University Network, the communications project for which Bechtolsheim designed his workstation.

Sun manufactures UNIX-based professional workstations and compatible software.

Written by Carolyn Tajnai, From the Valley of Heart's Delight to the Silicon Valley: A Study of Stanford University's Role in the Transformation

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