Len Kawell is an engineer and entrepreneur who once worked at

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

(DEC), where he was one of the designers of the

VAX/VMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Ope ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

. He also played a key role in the development of the

MicroVAX The MicroVAX is a discontinued family of low-cost minicomputers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The first model, the MicroVAX I, was introduced in 1983.(announced October 1983) They used processors that implemen ...

computer,

VAX Notes Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

, and VMC Mail. Much like DEC co-founders Harlan Anderson and Ken Olsen, Kawell graduated from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

with a degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

. Kawell was co-founder and president of Glassbook, Inc., that was eventually acquired by Adobe. The company developed PDF-based e-book reading software. He was also one of the co-founders of Iris Associates, where he co-designed

Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provide ...

, the first commercial groupware product. He would later go on to become the founder of Pepper Computer, where he served as

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

. The company was based in

Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs ...

, and was the developer of the

Pepper Pad The Pepper Pad was a family of Linux-based mobile computers with Internet capability and which doubled as a handheld game console. They also served as a portable multimedia device. The devices used Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies for Internet c ...

internet appliance/ game console.

External links

Mini bio at Pepper ComputerDCS alum Kawell's Pepper Pad puts Internet media into consumers' hands
University of Illinois alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{compu-bio-stub