The 12-bit PDP-8, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), is the first successful commercial minicomputer. DEC introduced it on March 22, 1965 for a price of US$18,500, and eventually sold more than 50,000 systems, the most of any computer up to that time. It was the first widely sold computer in the DEC PDP series of computers (the PDP-5 was not originally intended to be a general-purpose computer). The chief engineer who designed the initial version of the PDP-8 was Edson de Castro, who later founded Data General.