DEC may have made a fortune out of the City of London’s Big Bang, but that bang was a firecracker compared with those generated by its latest business partner: Dallas-based Atlas Powder Co is number one in sales of commercial and industrial explosives within the US, and it has selected DEC as its hardware vendor of choice; the contract includes a VAX 8700 running Cincom Systems Inc’s Ultra database in Dallas, and three MicroVAX systems in production facilities in Joplin, Missouri, Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, and Frankfort, Kentucky, and Atlas subsidiary distribution companies and plant locations will be linked into the system via DECnet; DEC ousted resident supplier IBM to win the business, and is very well aware that the kit had better all work perfectly, or there could well be the biggest bang of all right there in Maynard, Massachusetts.