In 1957, Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson, decided to start their own company. Harlan was also at MIT. They asked American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) for money. ARDC was an early venture capital company started by Georges Doriot. In the 1960s, Olsen received patents for a saturable switch, a diode transformer gate circuit, an improved version of magnetic core memory, and the line printer buffer. Their company's headquarters was in an old wool mill in Maynard, Massachusetts. In 1992, the company had their best sales of $14,000,000,000. DEC was sold to Compaq for $9,600,000,000 in 1999. It later became a part of Hewlett-Packard.