Personal computers

At the time (around the middle of the 20th century) when a few people knew the word "computer", and the
most of them thought that the "computer" meant a person who solved equations, there were people, who
dreamed for a personal computer. There were a number of contenders for the title of Personal Computer before
the machines that we now think of in this context appeared on the scene. For example, some historians have
called IBM 610 Auto-Point Computer, introduced in September, 1957, IBMs first personal computer on the
premise that it was intended for use by a single operator, but this machine was a big cabinet, was not based on the
stored program concept and it cost $55000, a huge sum for the time! No way to be personal at all! So, who was
the first?

The Electric Brain Simon of Edmund Berkeley

Edmund Callis Berkeley (19091988) is an American computer scientist, publisher, and a social
activist, who worked to achieve conditions that might minimize the threat of nuclear war.

Berkeley was born in New York on 22nd of February, 1909. After receiving his BA in Mathematics and
Logic from Harvard in 1930, he pursued a career as actuarial clerk in Mutual Life Insurance of New
York. In 1934 he took a position with Prudential Insurance of America, where he eventually became
chief research consultant. He stayed at Prudential until 1948, except for service in the United States
Navy during World War II.

First meeting of Berkeley with computers was in 1939, when he visited Bell Laboratories to see George
Stibitz's Complex Number Computer. Next was in 1942, when he joined the U. S. Navy and worked
at Dahlgren Laboratory as a mathematician. There, he was assigned to Howard Aiken's Harvard
Laboratory and observed Mark I and worked on building on the next sequential calculator project
(Mark II). In November, 1946 he drafted a specification for Sequence Controlled Calculators for the
Prudential, which led to signing a contract with the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1947
for one of the first UNIVAC computers.
In 1948, when Prudential forbade him to work on projects related to avoiding nuclear war, even on his
own time, Berkeley left to become an independent consultant and found his own companyBerkeley
Associates.

Shortly after the establishment of his company, in 1949, Berkeley wrote one of the first books on
electronic computers for a general audience, which made him famousGiant Brains, or Machines
That Think (see the book). In the book he described the principles behind computing machines (called
then "electric brains", "mechanical brains", "sequence-controlled calculators", or various other terms),
and then gave a technical but accessible survey of the most prominent examples of the time, including
machines from MIT, Harvard, the Moore School, Bell Laboratories, and elsewhere. Berkeley stated,
that in the future "automated library" catalog records (and, eventually, the documents) would be on
microfilm and retrieved by a digital computer: "You will be able to dial into the catalogue machine
`making biscuits.' There will be a flutter of movie film in the machine. Soon it will stop, and, in front
of you on the screen will be projected the part of the catalogue which shows the names of three or four
books containing recipes for biscuits."

In the abovementioned book, Berkeley also outlined his own project, which seems to be the first
personal computer in the world, called Simon - We shall now consider how we can design a very
simple machine that will think.. Let us call it Simon, because of its predecessor, Simple Simon...
Simon is so simple and so small in fact that it could be built to fill up less space than a grocery-store
box; about four cubic feet.... It may seem that a simple model of a mechanical brain like Simon is of
no great practical use. On the contrary, Simon has the same use in instruction as a set of simple
chemical experiments has: to stimulate thinking and understanding, and to produce training and
skill. A training course on mechanical brains could very well include the construction of a simple
model mechanical brain, as an exercise.

1
Plans on how to build this computer, as well as a general description of the computers state of the art,
were published in a series of 13 consecutive articles (see the first article, which is an introduction
to Simon and relay logic) of the journal Radio Electronics, starting from October 1950 issue (see the
nearby photo of the front cover of the journal).

Simon is a Harvard architecture machine, containing 129 relays, a stepping switch, and a five-hole
paper tape feed. The program is executed directly from paper tape. Program instructions and data are
input via a 5-level paper tape reader (5 bits or holes wide), as 5-level paper tape was standard for use
with teletypes before the advent of ASCII. Data may also be input manually via the front-panel
switches during program execution.

Various registers are provided, some for general data storage, others for targeted purposes. The
registers and busses are a mixture of 2- and 4-bits wide. The processor (ALU) is also 2-bits wide.

Output is via the 5 lamps, connected to the Output Registers.

Operations performed by Simon included: addition, negation, greater than, selection and several
bitwise operations. To program Simon one have to prepare a paper tape with the machine instructions
and data. The paper tape is the program memory: Simon executes the program instructions as it reads
the tape, it does not load the program.

The tape reader reads in one direction only. All instructions on the tape are executed in sequence,
there is no opportunity to skip instructions or branch. Some degree of conditional operation is
provided for by the selective assignment function of the ALU. There is one opportunity to create a loop
by forming the entire program tape into a loop.

A program may include programmed halts. Program execution stops, and the machine waits for
manual indication before resuming execution. The output lamps can be observed at this point and/or
a data value can be input from the front panel.

As an educational instrument, Simon was directed more towards the electrical implementation of
logic and introducing the principles of binary arithmetic, logic and automatic computation to a wider
public, than towards programming. As such, and as a minimal machine, programmability is rather
limited. The one saving grace may be that the program can be quite long (limited only by paper tape
handling), a feature that certainly would not have been feasible in an attempt to make an inexpensive
stored-program machine at the time.

Initially Simon cost about $600 to construct. The first working model was built at Columbia
University with the help of two graduate students. By 1959, over 400 Simon plans were sold.

What makes "Simon" unique? According to Mr. Berkeley, the machine has established at least half a
dozen world's records.
- It is the smallest complete mechanical brain in existence.
- It knows not more than four numbers; it can express only the number 0, 1, 2 and 3.
- It is "guaranteed to make every member of an audience feel superior to it."
- It is a mechanical brain that has cost less than $1,000.
- It can be carried around in one hand (and the power supply in the other hand).
- It can be completely understood by one man.
- It is an excellent device for teaching, lecturing and explaining.

In 1950 Berkeley founded, published and edited a journal, which was developed in 1951 to
the Computers and Automation, thought to be the first computer magazine.

Later Berkeley designed and sold several other simple calculating devicesGeniac (Genius Almost-
Automatic Computer) (see the lower image), Tyniac (Tiny Almost-Automatic Computer), Weeniac
(Weeny Almost-Automatic Computer), Brainiac (Brain-Imitating Almost-Automatic Computer).

2
In 1956 Berkeley published an article (see Small Robots Report), summarizing his ideas.

Edmund Berkeley was a genius, whose eccentricities had become proverbial even before his talents
were widely recognized. He died in Boston on 7th of March, 1988, survived by his wife, Suzanne, two
sons, a daughter, and a granddaughter.

LINC
The LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) was designed in the end of 1961 by Wesley Clark and
built in the beginning of 1962 by Charles Molnar and others (Wesley Clark designed the logic, while
Charles Molnar did the engineering) at Lincoln Laboratory of MIT, Massachusetts, and eventually
launched by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in March, 1962 (see the lower photo). With its
digital logic and stored programs, the LINC is accepted to be the first interactive personal computer in
the world.

In 1961 Wesley Allison Clark (born 1927), an electrical engineer at Lincoln Laboratory of MIT, who
had contributed substantially to the development of the large TX-0 and TX-2 computers, ordered by
US Navy, realized that time sharing, used in these highly advanced machines, is not the only solution
to the problem of direct access. He proposed building a relatively inexpensive, general-purpose
computer that could be controlled easily by biomedical researchers.
Initially ignored by Lincoln Lab's management, Clark continued to work on his idea for a small
computer. He disappeared from the Lab for about 3 weeks in the end of 1961, and returned with a
complete design for a small computer, with characteristics that marketing representatives would later
call user friendly.

LINC originally had one kilobit of core memory (1024 words), which was expanded to 2 Kb later. It
was designed for interactive use via Graphical User Interface, with a 256 x 256 CRT display and
four knobs (the equivalent of a mouse in those days) to enter variable parameters. The Soroban
keyboard, for alpha-numeric entry, has keys which lock down when pressed, and pop back up when
the computer has read them, thereby solving the problem of type-ahead! Removable media was two
LINC tape drives the predecessor of DEC tape, each spool holds 512 blocks of 256 12-bit words, or
512 bytesthe characters (upper-case, plus various greek and math symbols) fit into 6 bits.

The standard program development software (an assembler and screen editor) of LINCso called
Assembly Program (LAP), designed by Mary Allen Wilkes, was integrated with the Assembler and File
System and was written for users, not computer professionals. LAP made it fairly easy to program
LINC for biomedical experiments and, in its last version, was sufficiently flexible to allow for word
processing.

A typical configuration of the machine (see the nearby image for one of the prototypes in MIT)
included an enclosed 6'X20" rack, four boxes holding tape drives, a small display, a control panel, and
a keyboard. Analog inputs and outputs were part of the basic design. In these, the tall cabinet sitting
behind a white-Formica-covered table held two somewhat smaller metal boxes holding the same
instrumentation, a Tektronix display oscilloscope over the "front panel" on the user's left, a bay for
interfaces over two LINC-Tape drives on the user's right, and a chunky keyboard between them.

Linc was manufactured commercially by DEC (starting in 1964) and Spear Inc. of Waltham, MA. A
total of 50 were built, most at Lincoln Labs, housing the desktop instruments in four wooden racks.
The first LINC included two oscilloscope displays. Twenty one were sold by DEC at $43600 (a bargain
at the time).

When a scientist sat down at the LINC keyboard, he had at his disposal a complete and
comprehensible computer system. He could create a program and execute it in one sitting. Perhaps
most elegantly, as the data were displayed an experiment could be tuned instantly by turning a knob
hooked to an analog-to-digital converter. What sixth graders now take for granted was a remarkable
achievement which led recently to a "computer pioneer" award to Wesley Clarkby the IEEE

3
(Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), which acknowledged Clark as the designer of the
first personal computer, Eckert-Mauchly Award and membership to the National Academy of
Engineering.

Wesley Clark had a small but key role in the planning for the ARPANET (the predecessor to the
Internet). He suggested to Larry Roberts the idea of using separate small computers (later named
Interface Message Processors) as a way of standardizing the network interface and reducing load on
the local computers.

The Dynabook of Alan Kay

Alan Kay is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on computers,
object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design.

Alan Curtis Kay was born on May 17, 1940, in Springfield, Massachusetts. He earned a Bachelor's
degree in Mathematics and Molecular Biology in the University of Colorado at Boulder. Before and
during this time, he worked as a professional jazz guitarist.

In 1966, he began graduate school at the University of Utah College of Engineering, earning a Master's
degree and a Ph.D. degree in 1969. There, he worked with Ivan Sutherland, who had done pioneering
graphics programs including Sketchpad. This greatly inspired Kay's evolving views on objects and
programming.

In 1967 Kay started his first attempt at designing a metamedium (the FLEX machine), focused on
children as the future user community.

In 1968, Kay met Seymour Papert and learned of the Logo programming language, a dialect
of LISP optimized for educational use. Papert, a great influence on Kay, was creating computer
systems for children to use creatively on the other side of the United States, at MIT. There, he
developed LOGO. Kays previous work on FLEX had sought to create a computer that users could
program themselves. This work led to the definition of object-oriented programming (inspired, in
part, by Sutherlands Sketchpad. From Paperts work, Kay saw how far this idea could be carried,
and refined his notion of why it was important. The next stage of Kays work in this area culminated in
Smalltalk.

In 1970, Kay joined Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center, PARC. In the 1970s he was one of
the key members there to develop prototypes of networked workstationsusing the programming
language Smalltalk. Kay was later a research fellow at Apple and then at Disney. Before these, and
after his work at PARC, he directed Ataris sizeable but short-lived research lab, which was the victim
of the collapse of the U.S. videogame industry in the mid-1980s.

In 1968 Kay created a very interesting conceptthe Dynabook. He wanted to make A Personal
Computer For Children Of All Agesa thin portable computer, highly dynamic device that weighed no
more than two pounds The ideas led to the development of the Xerox Alto prototype, which was
originally called the interim Dynabook. It embodied all the elements of a graphical user interface, or
GUI, as early as 1972. The software component of this research was Smalltalk, which went on to have a
life of its own independent of the Dynabook concept.

The Dynabook concept described what is now known as a netbook computer or, (in some of its other
incarnations) a tablet PC or slate computer with nearly eternal battery life and software aimed at
giving children access to digital media. Adults could also use a Dynabook, but the target audience was

4
children. The software must have been much simpler than today's CMMS software applications for a
child to understand it. Even basic or advanced CMMS software requires a great deal of training for
user proficiency.

The Dynabook was never built, simply because it was too far ahead of technologies in the 1960s and
1970s. Kay and his group however continued to develop the concept. The first working prototype of
Dynabook was built almost 20 years after creating the concept (see the nearby image). But it largely
inspired not only the development of the first desktop personal and portable computers (e.g. Xerox
NoteTaker drew heavily on Dynabook), graphical user interface, multimedia, as well as the devices we
now call laptops, although its taken four decades to slim the tech down to the point where usable
computers actually weigh is bellow 1 kg.

When later Kay accepted a position in Xerox's PARC, he tried to interest Xerox execs in his project.
His thoughts about an intimate personal computer were mostly of a service naturethat is, how could
and should it act as an amplifier for human, especially child, endeavors? This is what led to quite a bit
of UI, language and media design, some of which made it out to the commercial worlds in the 1980s.

The concept of Dynabook is described in a 1972 article of Kay A personal computer for children of all
ages, presented at the ACM National Conference in Boston.

In the abovementioned paper is specified: Although it (i.e. Dynabook) can be used to communicate
with others through the knowledge utilities (or business information system), we think that a large
fraction of its use will involve reflexive communication of the owner with himself through this
personal medium, much as paper and notebooks are currently used...
What then is a personal computer? One would hope that it would be both medium for containing
and expressing arbitrary symbolic notions, and also a collection of useful tools for manipulating
these structures, with ways to add new tools to the repertoire... Personal also means owned by its
user (needs to cost no more than a TV) and portable (which to me means that the user can easily
carry the device and other things at the same time). Need we add that it be usable in the woods?
The size should be no larger than a notebook; weight less that 4 lbs.; the visual display should be
able to present at least 400 printing quality characters with contrast ratios approaching that of a
book; dynamic graphics of reasonable quality should be possible; there should be removable local
file storage of at least one million characters traded off against several hours of audio files.
The active interface should be a language whish uses linguistics concepts not far removed from the
owner of the device. The owner will be able to maintain and edit his own files and programs when
and where he chooses. He can use his Dynabook as a terminal when at work (or as a connection to
the library system when in school). When he is done perusing and has discovered information that
he wishes to abstract and take with him, it can rapidly be transferred to his local file storage...
A combination of this carry anywhere device and a global information utility such as ARPA
network or two-way cable TV, will bring the libraries and schools (not to mention stores and
billboards) of the world to the home. One can imagine one of the first programs an owner will write
is a filter to eliminate advertising!

Sounds good, isn't it?! Personal notebook computer with easy rechargeable battery and local drive
memory, price some 500 USD, multimedia capabilities, wireless network access, Internet, etc. Let's
remind, this concept was created as early as the end of 1960s and beginning of 1970s, when under
"personal computer", people recognize something like DEC PDP-8 machine (see the photo bellow),
wardrobe-size box, which cost 18000 USD, and didn't have any of the abovementioned features.

5
 Hewlett-Packard 9100A
In the same 1968, when Alan Kay started to dream for his "personal computer for children of all ages",
the famous manufacturer of electronic devices Hewlett-Packard Co. launched a programmable
calculator, designed for scientists and engineers, who require complex calculations, which is probably
the first device in the world, called "personal computer".

It seems the earliest documented use of the term personal computer was in the October 4, 1968, issue
of Science (Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals). The issue contains a
Hewlett-Packard ad for its new HP 9100A, saying: "The new Hewlett-Packard 9100A personal
computer, is ready, willing, and able ... to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer... Ready to
relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer... Willing to perform log and trig functions, even
hyperbolics and coordinate transformations at the touch of a key. Able to take on roots of a fifth-
degree polynomial, Bessel functions, elliptic integrals and regression analysis."

Development of the Hewlett-Packard 9100A started in 1965 in Palo Alto, when a physicist named
McMillian approached HP with a small calculator he invented. Tomas Osborne, another inventor, also
approached HP with his own home-built calculator (when in 1971 the machine was patented (first
application filed in 1966), namely Osborne was specified as inventorsee the US patent 3623156). The
best features of the two products were combined, and Osborne was hired as a consultant to continue
the development work in HP Labs. The original size of the product was reduced by the invention of a
PC board ROM by Chuck Near.

The 9100A Desktop Computing Calculator (see the lower image) was introduced in March 1968. It
was the first, totally self-contained programmable unit of its kind, which could fit on a desk (see
the HP 9100A Brochure). It included a display with three registers and a magnetic card reader. An
optional printer, which fit neatly on the top of the 9100A, was offered separately. The 9100A used a PC
board ROM for its algorithms, including log and trig functions. Its volatile core memory used small
ferrite rings through which were woven copper wires. The initial price of $4900 was rather steep, and
it was later lowered to $4400. The 9100A was about the size and weight (18 kg) of a typewriter (see
the Technical Description of HP 9100A).

Programs and data were entered either through the 63-key keyboard or by means of wallet-sized
magnetic cards capable of holding up to two complete read/write memory images. Data in the 9100A
were represented as decimal floating-point numbers with two-digit exponents and twelve digits of
mantiss precision. Results were displayed on a 5-in electrostatic CRT in three lines (numeric only),
displaying the contents of three registers. Support was provided also for a full complement of
arithmetic, logarithmic, exponential, trigonometric, hyperbolic, coordinate, memory, and
programming functions. The speed of calculations was remarkable for the timetypical add/subtract
operations completed in 2 ms, multiply required 22 ms, square-root 30 ms, and trigonometric
functions 330 ms. Conditional and unconditional branching using flags and/or arithmetic
comparisons were also provided, along with program halt, pause, and single-step execution.

The 9100A's performance seems insignificant today with limited internal memory that stored only 196
steps. It was truly innovative for its time, however. It was organized into a 368-word by 6-bit
read/write coincident current core memory for programs and data; a 64-word by 29-bit, 800 ns,
threaded core ROM for control sequences; and 512-word by 64-bit program ROM for microcode. The
latter memory utilized a 16-layer printed circuit board with inductive coupling to sense lines from
reference and address lines. This unusual technology achieved a density of 1000 bits per square inch
using no integrated circuits!

A lot of peripheral devices can be connected to 9100A, let's mention only:

9101A Extended Memory (adding 248 registers capable of storing 3472 additional
program steps)
9104A Tape Reader (reads data into the 9100 from punched paper tape)
9107A Digitizer

6
 9120A Printer
9125A X-Y Plotter
9150A Display Monitor (large Screen Display, with a 17-inch diagonal CRT (cathode ray
tube) for use in classrooms or for display to any large group)
9160A Optical Card Reader (inputs program steps or data to the calculator using cards
marked with a soft lead pencil)
Although the HP 9100A was really a desktop computer (but yet specialized for scientific and
engineering purposes), the company decided to sell it as a calculator, explains the HP corporate
archivist. "At the time, the perception was that a computer had to be big to be accepted by the
market," she says. Calculators were also more likely to be bought than computers, she adds.
Purchasing agents were authorized to buy calculators, whereas computers required top management
participation, regardless of the cost.

One of the company's co-founders, Bill Hewlett, had another reason for marketing the 9100A as HP
did:
"If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customer's computer gurus because
it didn't look like an IBM. We, therefore, decided to call it a calculator and all such nonsense
disappeared."

Hewlett-Packard soon followed up with the 9100B, an enhanced version that provided several new
features.

In 1972 HP introduced the HP 9830Athe most powerful model of the original 9800 series
calculators. It greatly blurred the lines between traditional computers and calculators due in part to its
use of the BASIC programming language and options such as terminal emulation and a hard disk
drive.

Computer Trainer Model 650 (CT-650)

The Computer Trainer Model 650 (named also CT-650), developed by Irving Becker, was one of the
earliest digital personal computers. Some sources list this computer as the Arkay CT-650, because like
many who were involved with early computers, Irving Becker started off in radio and from 1945 was
an owner of a company, specialized in manufacturing of radio kitsArkay (after Radio Kits)
International Co., located in Hicksville, NY. By the time that this computer was offered however,
Becker has already changed (in 1965) the name of the company from Arkay International
Co. to Comspace Corp.

By the 1960s Irving Becker was developing many educational products, including the digital
computer CT-650 and a cardboard kit for Bell Laboratories, called CARDIAC (a reference to its
cardboard construction and the names of other kits like the popular Simon, Brainiac and Geniac of
Edmund Berkeley).

Irving was dedicated to education and even made a special version of the CT-650 that was made for
blind students. Aside from Braille lettering, the bulbs under each light were extra strong so as to
generate more heat, that way the student could read the results by feeling which lights were lit.

The CT-650 is sometimes called the paperclip computer, which is a reference to a very interesting
1967 book from Edward Alcosser, James P. Phillips and Allen M. Wolk (see the nearby image),
entitled How To Build A Working Digital Computer. The book describes how to make a simple digital
computer out of things one might find around the house, such as tin cans (for drum memory), screws,
paperclips (for switches) and even wooden spools of thread. The design of the CT-650 seems to have
relied on the book's plans and, therefore, it is called the paperclip computer.

The computer (see the lower image) is 54" in length by 22" in depth. Due to its educational
destination, it has six clearly labeled sections:

7
 Input Unitaccepts numerical inputs in decimal form and converts these to binary or
binary coded decimal (BSD) form
Arithmetic Unitperforms binary arithmetic and processing functions as directed by the
computer program
Control Unitinterprets the programmed instructions and directs sequence of operations
for all computer units
Output Unitconverts problem solutions from binary or BCD form to decimal form and
displays them
Core Memorysimulates a core memory, used in storing data while solving a problem
Program Drumperforms as magnetic drum memory and is used to store the program
The CT-650 is easily programmed and has a versatile instruction set. The users may write their own
programs, or oder existing or new programs from a library, called the Arkay Program Library.

A small number of CT-650 devices were sold, the price was about $1000.

Imlac PDS-1
The amazing Imlac PDS-1 minicomputer (see the photo bellow), made by Imlac
Corporation (founded in 1968) of Needham, Massachusetts, debuted in 1970 and was the first
personal graphics computer. It has a 16 bit main processor with a secondary built-in vector graphics
display list processor (which is controlling the display screen), both sharing the same core RAM
memory of 4096 16-bit words (see the technical manual of Imlac PDS-1).

PDS-1 comprises a operators console (which include a 14 inch CRT display screen and a keyboard) and
a processing unit (CPU). It has also an optional compact control console (on the right side of the
photo), which provides the operator a means of controlling the CPU directly.

The display is capable of displaying about 1200 characters or 500/800 inches of graphics or
combination of characters and graphics, and may be oriented in either the vertical or horizontal
direction. The PDS-1 used a vector display processor for displaying vector graphics as opposed to the
raster graphics of modern computer displays.

The PDS-1 was used in many pioneering computer applications. It was often used with another
flagship Imlac product, a typesetting program, called CES. The FRESS hypertext system had enhanced
capability and usability if accessed from a PDS-1 system. The user could make hyperlinks with a light
pen and create them simply with a couple of keystrokes. Multi-window editing on FRESS was also
possible when using the PDS-1.

The PDS-1 also had the capability to run remote graphical programs such as those that ran on
the Stanford AI Lab's main computer. The PDS-1 was also able to run the first online multiplayer
computer game, called Mazewar. The PDS-1 connected to a host PDP-10 computer (located at MIT)
running ITS over Arpanet and the Mazewar program. Up to 8 players running PDS-1 minicomputers
or other terminals could access MIT's Mazewar host. Legend has it that, at one point during that
period, MazeWar was banned by DARPA from the ArpaNet, because half of all the packets in a given
month were MazeWar packets flying between Stanford and MIT:-) The PDS-1 was also important
during the early days of Arpanet when network graphics protocols were under consideration.

Imlac PDS-1 was programmed in assembly language (see the PDS-1 Programming Guide). It had a
sort of precursor to the pointing devices and the mouse, as we know it today, so called light pen.
Instead of moving around a little round object and pressing a button, one would point at the screen
with a light pen and press a pedal (not very convenient, yeah?).

8
Either way, the Imlac PDS-1 seems like a computer such ahead of its time that it's quite surprising!
Vector graphics throughout its assembly-based operating system, a precursor to the GUI,
photosetting, and rather small compared to the sizes of computers in that time. It was really an
amazing machine.

Datapoint 2200
In the end of 1960's, 2 graduates at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, Harry Pyle and Victor
D. Poor, came up with the idea of a high density integrated circuit which would be programmable.
They offered this circuit design to various IC manufacturers and were turned down by all of them. The
reason? The chip was too specialized and would never have enough widespread applicability to be
financially worth developing.

Having failed to convince any IC manufacturer, but still believing in the concept Harry and Victor
pressed on and went looking for manufacturers who would have an application for the new chip. They
found such a firm in Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC), which made a variety of lower cost
computer terminals which were compatible with the various computer companies and which was
involved also in the development of the first microprocessors in other way. CTC was interested in the
chip because it presented a way to make one terminal that could be programmed to behave like and
handle the protocols of a variety of different computer manufacturers. CTC agreed to pay two different
chip makers (Intel and Texas Instruments) to produce the chip. Both chip makers decided to use a
new technology, called PMOS, to produce the chip.

Both chip makers have encountered new technology problems with PMOS and have failed to meet the
CTC deadline. So the contracts are canceled and CTC builds the chip via discrete TTL logic and puts it
into a programmable desktop terminal, called the Datapoint 2200.

Datapoint 2200 was unveiled in the beginning of 1970 and was launched to the market in May. It
becomes an extremely successful product and was manufactured as long as until 1979. So much so,
that CTC changes it's name to Datapoint Corporation. They go on to invent another new technology to
connect all of their low cost computers together. While the initial Datapoint 2200 did not have a
microprocessor in it, it had the programmable equivalent of an Intel 8008 (built by discrete TTL logic)
and it funded the initial development of the first microprocessor.

The Datapoint 2200 (see the upper image) was a box with size 9 5/8'' height, 18 1/2'' wide, 19 5/8''
deep, weight 47 pounds. It had a small built-in 7'' x 3,5'' CRT screen, which was of green&black
monochrome type, and worked in text mode 12 x 80. It had full stroke keyboard+numeric keypad with
integrated programmable beeper. The external data and program storage was 2 read-write cassette
decks for 130KB of mass storage. Internal memory of the first models was from 2 KB to 16 KB max.
There was a run light and 2 other lights on the keyboard. The I/O ports wereRS 232, LAN connector
and printer (parallel data) connector.

The operating system was Datapoint O/S (cassette/storage drum based O/S). When the machine
halted, you could not tell where in the program it had done so. So you put in the O/S cassette and
rebooted. You then did a memory dump and tried to deduce what had went wrong. Primitive by
today's standards, it was the first computer on a desktop.

There were also an optional disk drive using Shugart 8" floppies, single-sided, single-density. It was
the first commercial computer to include them! A number of peripherals can be connected also:
printer, tape device, 2 MB removable cartridge disk, card reader, etc. (see the Reference Manual)

Languages included Databus and Datashare ("COBOL-like" business computer languages, interpreted
to allow multiple 80 character by 24 row dumb CRTs to share tiny partitions of RAM memory in the
main system unit), a Basic interpreter, and RPG II compiler. (see the Programmers Manual)

9
 The Kenbak-1 of John Blankenbaker
The stored program, automatically sequenced computer Kenbak-1 was considered from some people
to be the first commercially available personal computer in the world.

It was created in 1971 by John Blankenbaker, working in his garage in Los Angeles. Garage lighting in
normally not sufficient to build a computer, unless he had a good DelMar overhead lighting fixture to
work by. Initial sales commenced in September of 1971. It was intended to be educational and the
professionals in the field were enthusiastic but it was a struggle to convince the non-professionals that
they could buy a real computer at this price ($750), thus only some 40 devices were sold, mainly to
schools.

The creator of Kenbak-1John Blankenbaker, had a long experience in the field of computers. He
started the design of a computing device as early as in the winter of 1949, when he was a 19 y.o.
physics freshman at Oregon State College, inspirited by an article in a magazine. After graduation
from the college in 1952, he worked at Hughes Aircraft Co. in the department for digital computers,
designing the arithmetic unit for a business data processor. Some time in the late 1950s he began to
think there could be simple computers which could be afforded by individuals.

As late as in the fall of 1970 he found himself unemployed and decided to investigate what might be
done to make a computer for personal use. He wanted the computer to be low cost, educational, and
able to give the user satisfaction with simple programs. The computer could be serial and slow which
would reduce the cost yet create the environment that was desired. It should demonstrate as many
programming concepts as was possible. Because of the small size, the native language of the unit
would be the machine language. Above all, it had to be a stored program machine in the von Neumann
sense. To keep the costs low, switches and lights were the input and output of the machine. (Some
thought was given to punched card input, but it was never developed.)

By the spring of 1971, the logic printed circuit board had been built and the computer was assembled.
Designed before microprocessors were available, the logic consisted of small and medium scale
integrated circuits, mounted on one printed circuit board. MOS shift registers implemented the serial
memory. Switches in the front keyed the input and lights displayed the output. The memory was two
MOS shift registers, each of 1024 bits. The computer executed several hundred instructions per
second.

The logic board (also called the mother board) of Kenbak-1 (see the upper image), contains the 132
integrated circuits on it. The front panel had the lights and switches which were connected by wires to
the logic board.

The clock of about 1 MHz was generated by a multivibrator.

Several cosmetic and small technical changes were made in going to the production units from the
prototype unit. The use of a red pushbutton to store data in the memory was abandoned. Instead a
toggle switch was installed to lock the memory against changes from the front panel. Legends were
redesigned and relocated for better visibility. A slot was installed in the front panel for a possible
punched card input.

The general format of the instructions was two bytes, where the first byte was the command and the
second byte was a constant, a memory address, or a pointer to an address.

The switches and light reflect two numeric representation. The color grouping by four in the switches
suggests the hexadecimal number system, while the physical spacing by three suggests the octal
number system. Users were encouraged by the coding sheets to write in an assembly language. They
had to compile the machine instructions manually though. (One high school student wrote a compiler
which ran on a larger computer.)

10
Data, instructions, and addresses were entered by first clearing the Input register with the Clear key
and then setting the individual bits. To set a memory address to the value in the Input Register, the
Set Address key was used. To store information which was in the Input register into the memory at the
address previously set up, the Store key was used. To read the contents of memory including the A, B,
X, and P registers, the address was set and then the Read Memory key was used. All of these
operations were done while the computer was halted.

To start automatic operations, the Run key was used. The computer could be stopped with
the Stop key. Holding the Stop key and pressing the Run key would cause the computer to execute one
instruction. While the computer was running, input could also occur via the Input register. For more
info see the Kenbak-1's Programmers Reference.

Xerox Alto
If any computer in this section deserves the label "remarkable", it is namely the Xerox Alto, developed
at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in 1972. Why?

The Alto greatly influenced the design of personal computers in the following decades, notably the
Macintosh and the first Sun workstations. It was not a commercial product, but several thousand
units were built and were heavily used at PARC, other Xerox facilities, and at several famous
universities for many years. It was not typically purchased by someone working based upon a personal
budget. The Alto was the first system to bring together all of the components of the modern Graphical
User Interface (GUI). I was the first to implement the LAN technology, named Ethernet. The first
WYSIWYG word processor was produced for the Alto.

The Alto was first conceived in a December 1972 memorandum written by the PARC scientist and
manager Butler Lampson (see the Memorandum for Xerox Alto), who requests support from the
Xerox Corporation for the construction of a number of Alto personal workstations.

Alto was inspired by the On-Line System (NLS) produced by Douglas Engelbart at Stanford Research
Institute (SRI), and was configured primarily by Chuck Thacker, the project leader. Manufacturing
was sub-contracted to Clement Designlabs, whose team included Carl J. Clement, Ken Campbell and
Fred Stengel. An initial run of 80 units was produced by Designlabs (initially an Alto cost some
$10000 to build), working with Tony Ciuffini and Rick Nevinger at Xerox El Segundo, who were
responsible for installing the Altos electronics. Due to the success of the pilot run, the team went on to
produce approximately 2000 units over the next ten years.

The original Alto's (see the upper image) incorporated:

Bit-mapped black and white display sized 606x808 (the same dimensions as a regular
(8.5"x11") sheet of paper, aligned vertically)

5.8 MHz CPU

128KB of memory (at the cost of $4000)

2.5MB removable cartridge hard drive

Three button mouse

64-key keyboard and a 5-finger key set

Development proceeded for the Alto for most of the 1970s, contributing progressive new features in
hardware and software. The PARC Altos were connected together in a local area network, using a new
networking technology named Ethernet. Early software for the Alto was written in the BCPL
programming language, and later in the Mesa and Smalltalk programming languages, which were not

11
widely used outside PARC, but influenced several later languages, such as Modula (see the Users
Handbook of Xerox Alto).

The following are a few of the programming facilities and software applications, available for
the Alto:

Many programming languages, including BCPL, LISP, Smalltalk , Mesa, and Poplar

Bravo and Gypsythe first WYSIWYG word processors

Laurel and its successor HardyNetwork E-mail clients

Markup and DrawPainting and graphics manipulation (bitmap editors)

NeptuneFile manager

FTP and chat utilities

GamesChess, Pinball, Othello and a Alto Trek game by Gene Ball

Silvector graphics editor, used mainly for logic circuits, printed circuit

Officetalkan experimental forms-processing system

The brain of Alto was a bit-slice processor based on the Texas Instruments' 74181 chip, a ROM control
store with a writable control store extension and 128 (expandable to 512) kB of main memory. It had a
hard disk that used a removable 2.5 MB single-platter cartridge (manufactured by Diablo Systems, a
company Xerox later bought), all housed in a cabinet about the size of a small refrigerator. The Alto's
CPU was a very innovative microcoded processor, which used microcode for most of the I/O
functions, rather than hardware. The microcode machine had 16 tasks, one of which executed the
normal instruction set, with the others used for the display, memory refresh, disk, network, and other
I/O functions.

The input devices of Alto were a custom detachable keyboard, a three-button mouse, an optional 5-key
chord keyset, as well as several other I/O devicesa TV camera, the Hy-Type daisywheel printer and a
parallel port, although these were quite rare. The mouse and chord keyset had been introduced by
SRI's On-Line System; while the mouse was an instant success among Alto users, the chord keyset
never became popular.

In the early mice, the buttons were three narrow bars, arranged top to bottom rather than side to side.
The motion was sensed by two wheels perpendicular to each other. These were soon replaced with
ball-type mice. These were photo-mechanical micefirst using white light and then using IR to count
the rotations of wheels inside the mouse.

The keyboard was interesting in that each key was represented as a separate bit in a set of registers.
This characteristic was used to alter where the Alto would boot from (it could be booted from either a
local disk, or the network.) The keyboard registers were used as the address on the disk to boot from,
and by holding specific keys down while pressing the boot button, different microcode and operating
systems could be loaded. This gave rise to the expression "nose boot" where the keys needed to boot
for a test OS release required more fingers than you could come up with. Nose boots were made
obsolete by the "move2keys" program that shifted files on the disk so that a specified key sequence
could be used.

By the beginning of 1978, Altos were being utilized in four test sites: the White House, the U.S. House
of Representatives, the Atlantic Richfield Company, and the Santa Clara, California, and the offices of
Xerox's copier sales division. Xerox donated a total of 50 Altos to outstanding universitiesStanford,

12
Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and University of Rochester, including IFS file servers (the file server was a
common application for the machine) and Dover laser printers. Xerox management rejected creating
a commercially obtainable version of the Alto for many years. The Xerox Star, the first commercial
product to use many of the Alto's ideas was released in 1981, just prior to the first IBM PC, at the cost
of $16000, but it was too late.

In December, 1979, Apple Computer's founder Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, where he was shown
the Smalltalk-80 programming environment, networking, and most importantly the WYSIWYGthe
mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto. He was not impressed by the first two, but
was excited by the last one, and promptly integrated itfirst into the Apple Lisa and then in
the Macintosh, inviting several key researchers from PARC to work in his company.

Hewlett-Packard 9830A
After introducing in 1968 the remarkable programmable calculator HP-9100A, which is probably
the first device in the world, called "personal computer", HP released newer, more advanced systems
to replace the aging and limited HP-9100A. These include the HP-9810A in 1971, HP-9820A and the
HP-9830A in 1972.

HP preferred to call its power enough machines "calculators", not "computers". HP cofounder William
Hewlett described the earlier HP-9100A: If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected
by our customer's computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM. We, therefore, decided to call it
a calculator and all such nonsense disappeared.

The attractive and portable HP-9830A (see the lower photo) is considered as one of the very first
desktop computer (it was the earliest all-in-one machine that you plugged into a wall outlet and could
enter BASIC language programs) systems ever because it includes everything to fulfill that title:
A standard QWERTY keyboard for data and text entry
An alphanumeric display (single line, 32 character red LED)
A BASIC programming language (an existing, standard computer language)
A method to load and store programs and data (a built-in cassette tape drive, later, mass storage was
available via the HP 9800 Mass Memory Subsystem.)

The HP-9830A is pretty big and heavy (20kg), but it also very expandable with many options. On the
back there are four external slots to interface with printer, plotters, digitizers, and other I/O devices.
There are also three internal and five external slots to install ROM modules for additional capacity
and peripheral control. Each ROM module, costing about $485, is limited to 2K of data.

The 9830 featured a standard read/write memory of 4K bytes, expandable to 16K bytes. The built-in
BASIC language compiler which provides an additional 16K bytes of hard-wired memory.

The built-in cassette drive with tape length 90 m can be operated using control keys on the keyboard,
or under computer program control, and holds up to 64K of data, with search bidirectional speed of
660 mm/sec, and read/write speed of 250 mm/sec (347 bytes/sec).

The optional HP-9866A printer (see below a HP-9830A with a HP-9866A) is a full page-width, high
speed, thermal line-printer capable of printing with incredibly high speed up to 240 lines per minute
with 80 characters per line. Its thermal print is a full 80 characters wide, and it doesn't even move
while printing. It prints one row of dots, the full page wide, all at once. The paper scrolls while
printing to complete the characters.

Micral N of Franois Gernelle

13
It is a difficult task to define the term personal computer, but one of the popular definitions is
containing the following criteria:

small, stand-alone
general purpose
advanced microelectronics technology (microprocessor)
operated by a single individual, interactively
no requisite computer training
affordable by an individual or small group
It appears the first computer, fulfilling the all abovementioned conditions is the french Micral N. It
was introduced in 1973, powered by Intel's 8008 chip, and was the first commercial non-kit computer
based on a microprocessor. It was conceived in France by Franois Gernelle, an ex-engineer at
Intertechnique (a french high-tech company). The term microcomputer first appeared in print in
reference namely to the Micral.

The Micral-N was initially developed for the I.N.R.A. (French National Institute for Agronomic
Research) which was looking for a computer for process control in his hygrometric measurements, but
didn't had sufficient budget to buy the lowest "mini" at the time (e.g. Digital Equipment PDP-8).

The development began in July 1972, in a hut in Chatenay-Malabry (Paris suburbs), with Gernelle and
3 of his collaborators: Benchetrit (software engineer), Alain Lacombe (electrical technician) and Jean-
Claude Beckmann (in charge of the mechanical part).

Franois Gernelle patented different features of Micral in France (patent FR2216883), Germany
(patent DE2404886), Netherlands (patent NL7401328), Japan (patent JP50117333) and USA (patent
3974480).

The first Micral (see the lower image) was delivered to the INRA in January 1973, and commercialized
in February 1973 by the company R2E (founded in 1972 by Gernelle and his ex-colleague Andre
Truong), for FF 8500 (about $1750).

The 8008 CPU, that powered the Micral was essentially an improvement of the Intel's first
microprocessor4004 and was Intel's first 8-bits processor. It was available as a DIL chip with 18-
pins and was originally intended to be a custom chip for Computer Terminals Corp. of Texas (later
known as Datapoint). CTC rejected the 8008 because it was too slow and required too many
supporting chips, but when Intel offered it to the open market, but it was not quite successful.

The Micral's CPU was working at 500 KHz (period 2s), running approximately 50000 instructions
per second. It was set on a bus, did have a MOS memory, parallel and serial I/O cards, a real-time
system. In one word, it had all the characteristics of nowadays computers. First systems were
manufactured and sold at the amazing price (at the time) of 8500 French Francs (about $1300).

The software was written on an Intertechnique Multi-8 minicomputer, using a cross-assembler.

Micral had a back-panel bus, the so called Pluribus with 74-pin connector. 14 boards could be plugged
in a Pluribus. With two Pluribus, the Micral could support up to 24 boards. R2E developed many
boards for Pluribus: processor board, memory boards, channel boards named "channel-stack",
communications adapters, digital I/O boards, analog I/O boards, floppy disk, hard disk and magnetic
cartridges controllers.

The computer used MOS memory instead of core. It had 8 levels of interrupt and a stack. The
computer was programmed with perforated cards, and used a teletype as output.

An 8-inch floppy disk reader was added to the Micral in December 1973, following a command of
the Commissariat l'Energie Atomique. This was made possible by the pile-canal, a buffer than could
accept one megabyte per second. In 1974, a keyboard and display were fitted to the Micral computers.
A hard disk became available in 1975. In 1979, the Micral 8031 D was equipped with a 5" 1/4 inches
hard disk of 5 Megabytes made by Seagate.

14
The Micral processor board embarked the 8088 with its addressing capability of 16 KB (address field
14-bits).

The following Micral computers successively used the Intel 8080 at 1 MHz (Micral G and Micral S),
Zilog Z80 (Micral CZ) and Intel 8088 as microprocessors. The Micral M was a multiprocessor. The
original SYSMIC operating system was renamed Prologue in 1978. The last Micral designed by
Franois Gernelle was the 9020. In 1981, R2E was bought by Groupe Bull. Starting with the Bull
Micral 30, which could use both Prologue and MS-DOS, Groupe Bull transformed the Micral
computers into a line of PC compatibles. Franois Gernelle left Bull in 1983.

Micral was a rather successful market product. The company R2E sold about 90000 units of the
Micral that were mostly used in vertical applications such as highway toll booths and process control.

The initial software available on Micral was application specific and the Prologue operating system
was developed during the late 1970s. It was to be one of the operating systems available to PC
compatibles.

Wang 2200
Wang Laboratories was a computer company founded (with $15000) in 1951 by Dr. An Wang (1920-
1990). An Wang emigrated from China in 1945 (he became a US citizen in 1954) and had gotten
Masters and Ph.D. degrees in applied physics in 1948 at Harvard. Wang later made some key
inventions in the development of core memory technology and pulse transfer controlling device
(implemented in Whirlwind computer) and floppy-disk drive. At its peak in the 1980s, Wang Labs had
annual revenues of $3 billion and employed over 33000 people.

By the mid 1960's, Wang Labs had already made a name for itself in building a series of increasingly
sophisticated electronic calculators, such as LOCI, the Wang 300 and 700 families, and many
derivative products. Seeing that calculators were getting cheaper and developments in LSI technology
would soon make them a commodity item, An Wang decided to develop a general purpose computer.
After several failures, finally he found success with the Wang 2200 computer. Within three years,
Wang had sold more than 10000 of the machines (some 65000 systems were shipped in its lifetime),
a remarkable success.

The first Wand 2200 was shipped in May, 1973. Over time, various kinds of peripherals were
developed, and enhancements were made to Wang BASIC with new microcode.

Build before the era of the microprocessor, the Wang 2200 processor was built using a couple
hundred TTL chips spread over half a dozen boards, and housed in a heavy steel box. It had a capable
BASIC interpreter (written in microcode, there was no machine code that a user could access, unlike
microcomputers that would come years later), meaning it could be turned on and used within
seconds.

The 64x16 cathode ray tube (CRT) display made editing and running programs interactive and
immediate, in comparison with the then-standard method of studying printouts on green bar paper.
The 2200 was also expandable; eventually nearly 100 different peripherals were developed for the
system.

Over the years, the 2200 evolved to a desktop computer with an ever-more powerful BASIC dialect, to
accommodate multiple users simultaneously, to support up to 16 workstations and utilized
commercial disk technologies that appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s. New models were
produced for nearly 20 years before Wang ended development.

15
 Scelbi-8H
In the same mid-1973 time-frame as the Micral made its debut, Nate Wadsworth and Bob Findley,
founders of the brand new Scelbi Computer Consulting (SCientific ELectronic BIological, pronounced
"sell-bee"), of Milford, Connecticut, designed the 8008-based Scelbi-8H microcomputer, which is now
recognized as being the first microprocessor-based computer kit to hit the market (the Micral wasnt a
kit, as it was only available in fully assembled form).

The first market announce for Scelbi-8H was a tiny advertisement in the back of the March 1974 issue
of QST, an amateur radio magazine. According to the advertisement, Kit prices for the new Scelbi-8H
mini-computer start as low as $440! Actually with 1K of RAM the price was some $500.

Scelbi-8H was based on the Intel first 8-bit microprocessor8008 (introduced in November, 1972),
the predecessor to the Intel 8080 CPU, used in the Altair 8800. The 8008 was capable of addressing
16Kb of memory and started the design of the first series of microcomputers. The Scelbi-8H had 1K of
RAM as a minimum, and an addition 15K of RAM could be purchased for $2760.

After the first advertisement in QST, Scelbi-8H (see the lower image) appeared in Radio-
Electronics and later in BYTE magazine.

Scelbi-8H soon had competitors. In July 1974 Radio-Electronics published plans for a similar 8008
machine, called the Mark-8, that skilled hobbyists could fabricate for the cost of parts. Companies like
MITS started selling systems based on more capable processors, such as the 8080 used in the MITS
Altair 8800. SCELBI responded by introducing the Scelbi-8B model with 16K of memory (the upper
limit of the 8008) and more software available for it.

No high-level programming language was available for the Scelbi-8H in the beginning. Wadsworth
wrote a book, Machine Language Programming for the 8008 and Similar Microcomputers, that
taught the assembly language and machine language programming techniques needed to use the 8H.
The book included a listing of a floating point package, making it one of the first examples of non-
trivial personal-computer software distribution in the spirit of what would much later become known
as open source. Because of the similarities between the 8008 and the 8080, this book was purchased
by many owners of non-SCELBI hardware.

Some 200 Scelbis were produced till 1975 and sold at about $500 each, but it did not become a big
market success (see the Users Manual of Scelbi-8H).

The SCELBI company discovered that they made more money selling software books than hardware,
so by the late 1970's the company had discontinued making hardware and switched to highly
documented software published in book form, including many games, a monitor, an editor, an
assembler, and a high-level language dubbed SCELBAL (a dialect of BASIC, that incorporated
Wadsworth's floating-point package) to compete against Altair BASIC.

The Altair 8800 of Ed Roberts

In contrast with the first microprocessor based personal computerMicral, the MITS Altair 8800 was
extremely successful market product. The designerEd Roberts intended to sell only a few hundred to
hobbyists, but he was surprised when he sold thousands in the first month.

The microcomputer was sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-
Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. Both kits and fully assembled machines were available.
Today the Altair 8800 is widely recognized as the first spark, that led to the microcomputer revolution
of the next few years, because the computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de
facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was
Micro-Soft's founding productAltair BASIC.

16
In 1969 an engineer, working at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New
MexicoHenry Edward Roberts (born 1942), together with 3 other colleagues decided to use his
electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. Therefore they
founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, and started selling radio transmitters and instruments for model rockets. Rocket kits
didn't achieve a market success, this later on MITS switched to calculator kits, which appeared to be
more successful venture.

The microcomputer industry really took off when Intel introduced the 8080 CPU in April of 1974. The
8080 processor was capable of addressing up to 64Kb of RAM and was powerful enough to build a
real computer. Following the line of several improved models of calculator kits and test equipment,
Roberts decided to design an Intel 8080 based computer, and in the first prototype was ready in
October 1974. At the same time he was contacted by one of the editors of the magazine Popular
Electronics, who knew MITS was working on an Intel 8080 based computer project and thought
Roberts could provide the project for the always popular January issue. Thus the Altair 8800 (the
name Altair was suggested by the editors, not by Roberts) was born (see the lower image).

The Altair 8800 was launched at just the right time. There was already a sizable customer base who
knew about computers and wanted to have one at handschools, colleges, electronics hobbyists, etc.
Actually there were Intel 8008 based computer systems available in 1974, but they were not powerful
enough to run a high level language like BASIC, suitable for non-professionals. The Altair had enough
power to be actually useful, and was designed as an expandable system, that opened it up to all sorts
of applications.

Roberts optimistically told his banker that he could sell 800 computers and he knew they needed to
sell 200 over the next year just to break even. For his surprise, when readers got the January issue
of Popular Electronics, MITS was flooded with inquires and orders. They had to hire extra people just
to answer the phones. In February MITS received 1000 orders for the Altair. The quoted delivery time
was 60 days but it was months before they could meet that. Roberts focused on delivering the
computer; all of the options would wait until they could keep pace with the orders. MITS claimed to
have delivered 2500 Altair 8800s by the end of May. The number was over 5000 by August 1975.
MITS had under 20 employees in January, but had grown to 90 by October 1975.

The Altair 8800 computer (see the lower image) was very profitable and the expansion bus allowed
MITS to sell additional memory and interface boards. Altair used a CPU Intel 8080A (rarely 8080),
which worked at speed 2 MHz (each instruction takes 4 clock cycles). The RAM provided was only 256
bytes ("1024 word" memory) and you had to buy this memory board. The BASIC language, which was
announced in July 1975, required one or two 4096 word memory boards and an interface board to be
provided. Computer kit cost $439, 2 types of memory boards were provided1024 word Memory
Board ($176) and 4096 word Memory Board ($264). Later Roberts offered also a Parallel Interface
Board ($92), 2 types Serial Interface Boards, Audio Cassette Interface Board and Teletype.

Initially the programming the Altair was an extremely tedious process, as a keyboard wasn't provided.
The user must toggle the switches to positions corresponding to an 8080 microprocessor instruction
or opcode in binary, then to use the enter switch to load the code into the machine's memory, and
then to repeat this step until all the opcodes of a presumably complete and correct program were in
place (see the lower image of the front panel). Sounds weird, but when the machine was first shipped,
the switches and lights were the only interface, and all one could do with the machine was make
programs to make the lights blink. Nevertheless, many boxes were sold in this form. Roberts was
already hard at work on additional cards, including a paper tape reader for storage, additional RAM
cards, a RS-232 serial interface to connect to a proper teletype terminal, a video card, and a 8" floppy
drive that used hard sectored floppies and stored 300 KB.

The January 1975 article for Altair excited a Harvard University undergraduate named Bill Gates, and
his good friend Paul Allen, and the duo contacted Roberts to write a BASIC language interpreter for
the machine. Roberts show his interest, but... in fact Gates and Allen had no BASIC yet to offer. When
they called Roberts to follow up on the letter he expressed his interest, the two started work on their
BASIC interpreter, using a self-made simulator for the 8080 on a PDP-10 minicomputer. They figured
they had only several weeks before someone else beat them to the punch, and once they had a version

17
working on the simulator, Allen flew to MITS in Albuquerque to deliver the program, Altair
BASIC (see the reference manual), on a paper tape. The first time it was run, it displayed Altair Basic,
then crashed, but that was enough for them to join. The next day, they brought in a new paper tape
and it ran (thank God:-). The first program ever typed in was "10 print 2+2" and after typing "run" it
typed back the correct answer: "4". Allan was offered a position by Roberts as the Director of
Software and the only member of the software department:-) Gates, who was then still a student,
started working for MITS part-time after he left school. Later, Gates and Allen would leave MITS to
begin a company called Micro-Soft.

The January 1975 article would also inspire the creation of the Homebrew Computer Club by a group
of Altair 8800 enthusiasts, and from this club emerged twenty-three computer companies,
including Apple Computer.

In 1977, MITS was bought by Pertec Computer Corp. for upwards of $6 million, and Roberts entered
medical school at Mercer University. He worked as a country doctor in Cochran, Georgia, and died on
1st of April, 2010.

5100 IBM Portable Computer

Introduced in September 1975, the 5100 Portable Computer was IBM's first production personal
computer (six years before the best-seller IBM PC). The 5100 was intended to put computer
capabilities at the fingertips of engineers, analysts, statisticians and other problem-solvers, but not for
business purposes.

If the size and weight of the 5100 seems (25 kg) huge by today's standards, then the IBM 5100 was
very slim compared to a late-1960's IBM computer with the equivalent capability. Such a machine
would have been nearly as large as two desks and would have weighed about half a ton.

The 5100 was much more powerful that its predecessors, like Altair 8800 (and much more expensive
howeverit was sold for between $8975 and $19975). It featured built in CRT display, keyboard,
BASIC interpreter and mass storage (tape drive). It has also a much more advanced design: A
microcoded 16-bit CPU executing an interpreter which in turn interprets a subset of the IBM 360 (or
IBM/3) mainframe instruction set!

Available options:

carrying case

IBM 5103 printer, dot matrix, tractor feed, 132 column, 80 char/s bidirectional

IBM 5106 external tape drive

communication adapter

serial I/O adapter

Depending on options installed, the 5100 can run the APL (see the IBM 5100 APL reference manual)
and/or BASIC programming languages and can have 16K, 32K, 48K or 65K RAM (see the table below
of twelve different models).

The 5100 has an internal five inch CRT, displaying 16 lines of 64 characters. Because the characters
are so small, IBM provided a three-position switch to allow the user to select the display of all 64
characters of each line, or only the left or right 32 characters (interspersed with spaces).

18
Mass storage was provided by a 1/4-inch cartridge tape drive using DC300 cartridges to store 204 KB
on 300 feet tape.

On a 5100 with both languages (APL and BASIC), the user's choice of language is selected by a toggle
switch on the front panel.

Instead of being written in the native microcode instruction set of the processor, the 5100's language
interpreters (APL and BASIC) are written for more sophisticated virtual machines, and the microcode
emulates those machines. This was done in order to economize on the amount of ROM (read-only
memory) needed to implement the language interpreters, and possibly to speed the software
development. The APL microcode emulates a subset of the System/360 instruction set, while the
BASIC microcode emulates the System/3.

IBM offered three Problem-Solver Libraries, contained in magnetic tape cartridges, with the IBM
5100 to provide more than 100 interactive routines applicable to mathematical problems, statistical
techniques and financial analyses.

The IBM 5100 hasn't a discrete CPU (Central Processing Unit) as in modern computers, the circuit
board seen below is the "processor" (it has 15 large chips).

The 5100 Portable Computer was withdrawn from marketing in March 1982.

Sphere 1
The Sphere 1 computer, one of the earliest microcomputers, was touted by its creatorMichael
Donald Wise (1949-2002), the founder and president of Sphere Corporation, a computer company
based in Bountiful, Utah, as the first true PC, because it had a keyboard (with a number pad), a
monitor, external storage, and did not run on a punch tape (prior microcomputers lacked the user I/O
interface built into the Sphere 1).

The Sphere 1 also included a keyboard operated reset feature consisting of two keys wired in series
that sent a reset signal to the CPU triggering a hard reboot. Wise considered this to be the first
keyboard activated reset, a predecessor to the now-common Ctrl-Alt-Delete key combination. The
Sphere keyboard has two reset switches and both had to be press at the same time. One was in the
upper right of the keyboard and one was in the lower left, thus a reset required two hands.

The Sphere 1 was created by Michael Wise in early 1975 and announced in November. Initially, Sphere
1 was sold as a kit, but later became available to consumers fully assembled. The machine had a
limited run of 1300 units (about half were sold as kits and the remainder were sold assembled), with
initial price $860.

The Sphere 1 featured a Motorola 6800 microprocessor, 4KB DRAM, on-board EPROM, monitor and
keyboard. The peripheral selection includes floppy disks, printers, paper tape punches and readers,
additional terminals, digital I/O, etc. The ROM of a basic system contains drivers, BASIC language,
debugger and assembler. When the disk system is purchased, the user received FDOS (disk operating
system with an editor, file structure and full assembler) (for a full description, see the Sphere 1
brochure).

Michael Wise was an inventor and creative genius, not a businessman. His company began advertising
before the product was fully debugged in order to finance its growth. Enormous, unexpected demand
overwhelmed the company, which was literally killed by success (Michael Wise resigned as president
in March 1976 and Sphere Co. entered bankruptcy in April 1977.) Competitors quickly filled the void.
Nonetheless, the Sphere had made its mark on the history of the personal computer, and contributed
to both the specs and design of future generations of hardware. Sphere 1 inspired many copycats.

19
Who was Michael Wise?

Michael Donald "Mike" Wise was born on 22 June, 1949, in Wiesbaden, Germany, to Donald Wise
(1918-2007), a Major in the Air Force stationed in Germany, and his wife Bonnie Jean Eacho Wise
(1921-1988). He was the third of 5 children born to the family.

Mike attended 24 schools worldwide before graduating from High School in Brewster, Washington, in
1968.

That summer Mike began college at Brigham Young University in Utah and took a course in BASIC
using an IBM 360/50. From that point on he quickly became what we would call a hacker. While in
college, he wrote device drivers and two operating systems, and also managed to go to school. He also
started his first programming business, IPCS, in 1970, developing a mailing list program on an NCR
Century 50. Other computers he used in school included the SEL-810b, IBM 1130, IBM 370/65, IBM
650, and the IBM 1410.

In 1971 Mike began teaching at the College and was on staff for 18 months before leaving for an
engineering company that used the PDP-11 computer in Automated Inventory Control (Robotics)
applications. Wise quit two years later to start his own Sphere Corporation in 1975.

Later Wise was involved in the development of the TRS-80, Commodore PET, and the Macintosh, as
well in the building and selling the first screen-based microcomputer WYSIWYG word processor, and
numerous other "firsts". Later he had also a successful career in software development starting A-
Systems Co. in 1978, the first company to provide job cost accounting software for the PC, as well as
his own Internet business.

Michael Donald Wise passed away on 28 December, 2002, in Salt Lake City, due to complications of
diabetes.

Digital Group Systems

The Digital Group was a Denver, Colorado based company founded in 1974 by Robert Suding, Ph.D. in
Systems Analysis from Florida State University, a Latin teacher at a junior high school in Michigan
and a computer engineer for IBM (see the upper photo) and Dick Bemis to sell microcomputers,
designed by Suding. Their computers were among the most advanced microcomputer systems
available at the time.

The Digital Group was the first company to produce a system built around the still very popular Zilog
Z80 processor, but their hobbyist-targeted products also included the MOS 6502 and Motorola 6800
processors. Its products were based on a system of interchangeable boards and components which
allowed users to upgrade to different CPUs without having to replace their peripherals.

Their computers included video, cassette tape, and keyboard interface standard with every system, as
well as a simple operating system on tape geared towards programmers. The Z80 and 8080 systems
also included several demonstration programs.

Despite its innovative designs, Digital Group was not successful as a computer manufacturer. They
never supplied equipment on a steady basis and in August of 1979 went to bankruptcy, while having
thousands of product information requests and orders waiting to be filled.

The Sol-20 of Lee Felsenstein

20
Lee Felsenstein (b. 1945 in Philadelphia) is an American computer engineer who played a significant
role in the development of the personal computer, designing two important machinesSol-20
and Osborne 1 (one of the first portable computers), as well as another computer hardware.

In November 1975, the electronics engineer Robert M. (Bob) Marsh, who had just founded his own
company, Processor Technology in Berkeley, California (to produce ROM, RAM, and I/O cards for the
Altair), and Leslie (Les) Solomon (technical editor of Popular Electronics magazine) discussed the just
emerged concept of the personal computer. The famous Altair 8800 was just presented (in the
January 1975 issue of the Popular Electronics) and seemed to be very profitable, although it had a
small amount of memory and its programming was an extremely tedious process, as a keyboard
wasn't provided. Solomon agreed to carry a construction article on an intelligent terminal on the
cover of the magazine, if a working model could be supplied in thirty days.

The work on project started immediately in Processor Technology, and Marsh ask for advice his friend
Lee Felsenstein, whose workshop was in the same room as his.

Lee Felsenstein, a BSc in electrical engineering at University of California, Berkeley, (1972), and a
friend of Marsh from the University (Marsh was alumnus of class of '68) and Homebrew Computer
Club (an early computer hobbyist users' group in Silicon Valley, CA), already worked for Processor
Technology on the project for building a plug-in video terminal board for Altair. He became the main
designer of Sol-20, working in the cooperation of Marsh himself (who designed the power supply and
the audio cassette interface) and Gordon French (project manager and mechanical designer).

As the design progressed, the team realized that they were building a general-purpose computer
rather than just an intelligent terminal, but the decision was made to soft-pedal the fact until the last
possible moment. Once published, all the fuss possible was to be made about its general-purpose
nature; but until it actually saw print, it was to be treated first as a terminal.

A friend of Marsh could supply walnut side panels for the case, and if the computer was designed low
enough, they can use center-cut pieces of wood, which were ordinarily almost thrown away, thus were
almost free to get. The height problem was solved by mounting the expansion boards horizontally
rather than vertically (see the lower image). With only room in the case for five boards, most of the
computer functions, including the processor, video, I/O ports, and cassette interface, were mounted
on a single large board positioned on the bottom of the case.

When the prototype machine was completed, Marsh and Felsenstein headed for New York to
demonstrate it to Les Solomon. The demonstration in the offices of Electronics was successful, in spite
of the fact that when the computer was initially turned on, it did not work. Murphy's Law confirmed!
Felsenstein needed almost a whole day to trace the trouble to a wire, damaged during the
transportation to New York.

The machine had been named The SOL after the biblical king Solomon when Felsenstein proposed:
"Let's advertise it as having the wisdom of Solomon". The computer was launched to the market in
June and was presented in the July 1976 issue of the Popular Electronics.

The article in Popular Electronics offered a kit version (just like Altair and Imsai computers) at a very
low price ($995) and free schematics to all who asked. Processor Technology was soon deluged with
orders, and it took almost a year to fulfil them.

The Sol computer was designed in 3 variations:

1. Sol-PC has a single circuit board without a case or power supply. It was sold as a $475 kit, which
was assembled by the purchaser, or fully assembled for $745.
2. Sol-10 was a Sol-PC as the motherboard, but include a case, keyboard and power supply.
3. Sol-20 was the same as Sol-10, but include a vertical expansion backplane, enhanced keyboard, a
bigger power supply, and cost about $200 more.

The full working version of Sol-20 ($2129) was introduced in August 1976 at the Personal Computing
Show in Atlantic City and it became the hit of the show.

21
SOL-20 became known as the most reliable machine on the market for the time. By 1977, it was the
dominant personal computer in the industry. It was in production until 1979, as about 10000 of them
were produced (some 5000 as kits, some 5000 as pre-builts), when it has been had replaced by the
legendary Apple ][ as leader of the industry.

The processor of Sol-20 was Intel 8080, working at 2 MHz. Internal memory: RAM 1KB up to 64KB
max, ROM 1 or 2KB, 1KB video. Display: 6416 text. External storage: cassette tape, 5.25" and 8" disk.
Parallel and serial I/O, 5 expansion S-100 slots on the main board. OS options: CP/M, BASIC,
NorthStar DOS and a variety of others. See The System Manual of SOL-20.

Sol-20 was one of the earliest to include a keyboard interface and support circuitry for full
implementation of every 8080 function. It was a pioneer towards modern video output boards by
having a design that actually put up alphanumeric characters on the screen, using a form of
distributed processing that didn't lean on the CPU for all processing.

The NoteTaker of Xerox

In 1976 a Xerox Corporation team, lead by Douglas G. Fairbairn (who used to work on the
famous Xerox Alto project, which pioneered the graphical user interface), working at Xerox
Corporation PARC in Palo Alto, California, developed the Xerox NoteTaker, an early portable
computer, which strongly influenced the design of some later computers like Osborne 1 and Compaq
Portable.

NoteTaker relied heavily on the earlier Dynabook project of Alan Kay (although it was not so advanced
regarding its time), and just like it, it did not enter production, and only around ten prototypes were
built.

The NoteTaker computer (see NoteTaker System Manual) weighted some 22 kg and was built using
what was then highly advanced technology, including a built-in monochrome display monitor, a 340K
bytes floppy disk drive and a mouse. It fitted into a case similar in form to that of a portable sewing
machine; the keyboard folded out from the bottom to reveal the monitor and the floppy drive.
NoteTaker used a version of the Smalltalk-78 operating system that was written for the Xerox Alto
computer.

NoteTaker featured some very advanced hardware: a central CPU with 1 MHz Intel 8086 processor
and 4K 16-bit words local memory; a minimum of 128 kB of 16-bit RAM; 7" diagonal CRT displaying
640 dots horizontally and 480 dots in the vertical direction; a 300 bps modem; a 2" speaker for audio
output; a transparent overlay tablet for pointing on the screen; and analog-to-digital converter with an
8 input multiplexer on the input, and a two channel digital-to-analog converter; interfacesethernet,
EiA, and IEEE bus interface.

The architecture of NoteTaker is such that a small number of processors can be operated in parallel,
thus the system offered a useful platform for experimenting with multiprocessor architectures.

The NoteTaker had never been produced commercially, but including so much advanced technologies,
it would likely have cost in excess of USD 50,000.

Compucolor 8001
Charles A. Muench, a PhD in Electrical Engineering, started in 1972 in his basement in Duluth,
Georgia, his second company Intelligent Systems Corp. (ISC). The initial goal of the company was to
design an intelligent and cheap color CRT (cathode ray tube) based terminal. Until this time, the

22
computer terminals were mechanical Teletype or dumb (text only) electronic devices, using
monochrome (black and white, green, or amber) displays.

Their first product was ready in 1973, but was advertised as late as in February, 1976, as the Intecolor
8001 professional intelligent CRT terminal. It was a $1395 kit to be assembled by the purchaser,
featuring a huge 19-inch CRT, and based on Intel 8080 CPU married with additional integrated circuit
chips from Texas Instruments. ISC's new design was a breakthrough in terminal design since it
offered an 8-color display with text and graphics capabilities. A phenomenal breakthrough in
technology at the time!

In December, 1976, the Intecolor terminal was expanded from a computer interface device into a
complete stand-alone computerCompucolor 8001, an expanded, stand-alone micro-computer with
built-in BASIC programming language. Compucolor 8001 is often regarded as "First Desktop Color
Graphic Computer".

The Compucolor 8001 (see the User Manual of Compucolor 8001) is housed in a single cabinet with
all CPU and monitor electronics in the same housing, and was powered by Intel 8080 CPU, running at
2MHz. RAM memory was 4K to 32K. The 19-inch color CRT display worked at 2 modes: 80 x 48 text
or 192 x 160 graphics (8/8 foreground/background colors). Communication ports are one (or two)
RS-232. External storage is a floppy-tape (one or two external 8-track, continuous-loop tape drives,
running at 4800 Baud rate, storing up to 1024 KB of data per tape). The floppy-tape drive was short
lived due to poor performance, thus by 1978, 8-inch standard Shugart devices were supported (with a
formatted capacity of 110 KB each).

Compucolor had up to four modes of operation:

CRT mode
Compucolor BASIC mode
CPU Operating System mode (optional)
File Control System mode

When initially turned-on or reset, Compucolor 8001 boots in CRT Mode, featuring only two-way
communication with another computer via the RS-232 serial port (this is how most standard
computer terminals of the day operated.)
Pressing the keys "ESC"+"W" on the keyboard switches the computer into Compucolor BASIC mode,
which allows the user to write, edit and run programs in the Compucolor BASIC programming
language.
If so called option 34 has been installed, pressing keys "ESC"+"P" on the keyboard switches the
computer into CPU Operating System mode, which enables the user to manipulate the contents of the
system memory, read and write magnetic tapes, and execute programs.
A fourth mode of operational was added to the system in 1978 to facilitate the newly added floppy-
drive capabilities. Pressing "ESC"+"D" on the keyboard switches the system into File Control
System mode (sort of DOS), to allow the user to access and manipulate the external data storage
devices, like the mini-disk drives, to load and save data and programs.

The TRS-80 of Steve Leininger

In 1975, Don French, a buyer for the company Radio Shack (a successful American chain of electronics
stores, owned by Tandy Corp.) in the West Coast, purchased a MITS Altaircomputer, which he used
for inventory control. He became so fond of his new toy, that began designing his own kit and tried to
convince the vice president of manufacturing John Roach, the company to develop and sell such a
device. In November, 1976, TRS hired the 24 y.o. nerd Steve Leininger, then working for National
Semiconductor (and a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, just like Apple's Steve Jobs and
Steve Wozniak and Lee Felsenstein of Osborne-1, to design the machine.

In December 1976 French and Leininger received official approval for their project and in February
1977 they showed their prototype, running a simple tax-accounting program, to Charles Tandy, the

23
owner of Radio Shack's parent Tandy Corporation. A funny incident happened during the
demonstration, as the big boss was asked to enter a salary and he entered 150000, but the variable for
this figure was a 16-bit integer, thus the program crashed miserably. So Mr. Tandy was kindly asked to
enter a number up to 32000 in order to get the program working :-) It was somewhat confusing the
constructors to make such underestimation of their boss' salary (and to miss a validation check for the
input), but nevertheless Tandy gave "OK" to the project, so TRS-80 ("TRS" stood for "Tandy Radio
Shack" and the "80referenced the microprocessor, the Z-80) was announced at a press conference in
August, with first orders shipped in September, 1977.

French and Leininger suggested that the company could sell 50000 computers, but more skeptical
executives disagreed and suggested 1000 to 3000 per year. Roach persuaded Tandy to agree to build
3500 (the number of Radio Shack stores), so that each store could use a computer for inventory
purposes if they did not sell.

Suddenly (for the bosses), in several days over 15000 people called Radio Shack to purchase a TRS-
80, paralyzing its switchboard. Still forecasting 3000 sales a year, the company sold over 10000 TRS-
80 Model Is in its first one and a half months of sales, and over 200000 during the product's lifetime.
The Model I went on to become the best-selling microcomputer for several years and 1979, it had the
largest available selection of software in the microcomputer market.

So, what made the TRS-80 such a market hit?

1. The price. TRS-80 was announced at 399 USD, or 599 with a 12" monitor and a Radio Shack tape
recorder as data cassette storage, while its direct rivals, like Commodore PET was announced at 795
USD, and Apple II was announced at 1298 USD.

2. The massive market invasion. Commodore PET was announced several months earlier but had not
yet shipped. Moreover Radio Shack use its more than 3500 electronics stores to distribute the
machine.

3. TRS-80 was a technically sound machine. It featured a Zilog Z80 processor clocked at 1.77 MHz, 4
KB of RAM, Cassette I/O and video ports, 12-inch monochrome monitor (64 X 16 text), operating
system was BASIC in ROM.

The serious users eventually purchased the $299 Expansion Interface (see the attractive external
module which sits under the monitor), which offered many improvements over the basic TRS-80 like:
Printer port; Floppy disk controller (up to 4 drives); Expansion port; Optional serial port; Up to 32K
additional RAM; Two tape drive connectors; Signals for a real time clock.

Apple II
Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak (born August 11, 1950 in San Jose, California) is an American computer
engineer, a legendary person in the world of computers. And the main reason for this remarkable
recognition is the computer Apple II (often written as Apple ][). By the end of its production in 1993,
somewhere between five and six million Apple II series computers (including approximately 1.25
million Apple IIGS models) had been produced.

In the beginning of 1970s, one of Wozniak's friendsSteve Jobs, had the idea to sell the computer as a
fully assembled PC board. Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs to try the venture.
Together they sold some of their possessions (such as Wozniak's HP scientific calculator and Jobs'
Volkswagen van), raised $1300, and assembled the first prototypes in Jobs' bedroom and later (when
there was no space left) in Jobs' garage.

In 1973 Wozniak joined Hewlett-Packard and later proposed that HP create a personal computer. He
however was rejected (what a pity for HP:-)

24
On April Fool's Day of 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer Inc. (Jobs came up with the
name Apple, because he had once worked in an apple orchard when he had experimented with
vegetarianism in India). Wozniak still remains at HP, but he will leave in several months and will
became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. Actually Woz was the
computer guru, Jobsthe design and business genius.

Their first product, the Apple I computer, was similar to the Altair 8800, the first commercially
available personal computer, except it had no provision for internal expansion cards. With the
addition of these cards, the Altair could be attached to a computer terminal and could be programmed
in BASIC. The Apple I was purely a hobbyist machine, with a $25 MOS Technology 6502
microprocessor running at 1 MHz, on a single-circuit board with 256 bytes of ROM, 4K or 8K bytes of
RAM and a 40 character by 24 row display controller. It lacked a case, power supply, keyboard, or
display, which had to be provided by the user. The Apple I was priced at $666.66.

Jobs and Wozniak sold their first 100 Apple I computers to a new computer shop, called the Byte
Shop, in Mountain View, California. The owner bought just the circuit board for the Apple I, but he
had to supply the keyboard, monitor, transformer, and even the case in which to put the computer.

In August, 1976, Wozniak begins work on the Apple II. In December, 1976, Woz and Randy Wigginton
demonstrate the first prototype Apple II at a Homebrew Computer Club meeting. In March
1977 Apple Computer moves from Jobs' garage to an office in Cupertino. In April Apple
Computer delivers its first Apple II system (see the lower image), for $1295 (with 4K RAM). The CPU
was MOS 6502, working at 1.0 MHz. RAM was from 4K min, up to 48K max. Display supported 2
modes: 280X192 graphics and 40X24 text, 6 colors maximum. I/O ports were composite video output
and cassette interface. There were 8 internal expansion slots. An external 143K floppy was offered in
1978.

The original Apple II operating system was only the built-in BASIC interpreter (written by Woz)
contained in ROM. Most commercial Apple II software on disk, e.g. educational games and
productivity programs, booted directly on the hardware and either had no operating system or
incorporated one of its own (which was usually invisible to the user.) The Apple DOS Disk Operating
System was added later to support the diskette drive (see the Apple II Reference Manual).

Apple I appears to be a market failure, in May 1977, 10 months after its introduction, only 175 Apple I
kits have been sold. So Woz and Jobs focused on Apple II. And they won. In October, 1979, 2.5 years
after the introduction of the Apple II, 50000 units have been sold, all rivals (as Sol-20) were smashed
and this was only the beginning of the story. In 1982 was reported that sales of all Apple II systems to
date were 750000.

The remarkable Apple II became one of the most successful and recognizable computers for over 15
yearsfrom 1978, during the 1980s and early 1990s. It was aggressively marketed through volume
discounts and manufacturing arrangements to educational institutions, which resulted in it being the
first computer in widespread use in American colleges and secondary schools. A focused effort to
develop educational and business software for the Apple II, including the 1979 release of the
popular VisiCalc spreadsheet, made the computer especially popular with business users and families.

The GRiD Compass of Bill Moggridge

William (Bill) Moggridge (b. 1943), a British industrial and interaction designer, the current director
of the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, is known as a
pioneer of interaction design and one of the first people to integrate human factors into the design of
software and hardware, as well as the designer of GRiD Compass 1100, the first commercial laptop
computer.

Moggridge designed the computer in 1979, but the first GRiD Compass (the computer was announced
in marketing materials as Model 1100, but it did not exist, the released machine was the Model 1101)

25
was released in April 1982, at a price 8150 USD. The manufacturer was GRiD Systems Corporation,
Mountain View, California.

Along with the Sharp PC-5000 and Gavilan SC computers, released in 1983, the GRiD Compass
established much of the basic design of subsequent laptop computers, although the laptop concept
itself owed much to the Dynabook project of Alan Kay.

The design of GRiD Compass (see the lower image) used a clamshell-style die-cast case (where the
screen folds flat to the rest of the computer when closed), which was made from a magnesium-alloy
(GRiD had the patent on the clamshell idea). The size of the machine was 38 (H) 29 (D) 5 (H) cm.

The computer featured an Intel 8086 processor (8MHz) with 8087 math coprocessor, 256KB DRAM
(up to 512KB), a 6-inch 320240-pixel bright (80 chars 25 lines text), sharp electroluminescent
monochrome display, 384K internal magnetic bubble memory (it is a type of non-volatile computer
memory, developed by Andrew Bobeck in 1960s, that uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold
small magnetized areas, known as bubbles or domains, each storing one bit of data), and a 300/1200
baud modem.

I/O ports are RS-232/422 serial and GPIB parallel (Grid Processor Interface Bus), which allowed
daisychaining of multiple computers? The keyboard was full stroke 57 keys.

External devices such as hard drives and floppy drives (10 Meg hard drive/5.25-inch floppy drive
combo or 360K 5.25-inch floppy drive model) could be connected via the IEEE-488 I/O. The power
input is ~110/220 V, 4766 Hz, 75 W.

The GRiD Compass ran its own operating system, GRiD-OS, which was a full-function, menu-oriented
and powerful operating system. The suite included also several applications: GRiDManager
(communication and utility functions), GRiDPrint (control format and appearance of text files),
GRiDPlan (electronic worksheets), GRiDFile (database utilities), GRiDPlot (converts data to graphs),
GRiDBASIC (high-level programming language), and GRiDWrite (full-screen text editor).

Originally developed for business executives (who else can afford a personal computer for 810000
USD at that time?), GRiD Compasses were also used by the U.S. government, U.S. military in the
field (naval vessels, attached to paratroopers, etc.), and by NASA on the Space Shuttles during the
1980's. It's even believed that the US President's nuclear football at one time included a GRiD
computer.

The portable Osborne 1 computer sold at around the same time as the Compass (in the beginning of
1980s), although lacked the Compass's refinement and portable size, was more cheap and more
popular device, moreover it ran the popular CP/M operating system.

Sinclair ZX80
In May, 1979, Jim Westwood, the Chief Engineer of Science of Cambridge Ltd (a British consumer
electronics company, incorporated in 1973 by Sir Clive Marles Sinclair), started a project to design a
new microcomputer (to replace the first microcomputer kit of the companyMK14), based on Zilog
Z80 microprocessor. Westwood needed only nine months to develop a remarkable deviceSinclair
ZX80 (it was named after the Z80 processor with the X for the mystery ingredient), and it was
announced in February, 1980, as a kit form for 79.95, (purchasers had to assemble and solder it
together), and as an assembled version at 99.95.

The low price opened up the market completely, with more people now able to afford a home
computer resulting in over 50000 unit sales and a waiting list for the ZX80 of several months (an
unheard number for the day), before they came out with the improved ZX-81 one year later.

26
Sinclair ZX80 had the ability to outperform many of its competitors, and yet was built using readily
available components. Proving hugely popular, the ZX80 weighed in at just 340 grams, and was the
first computer with a price tag of less than 100. In the USA the computer was advertised as The first
personal computer under $200!

The computer was mounted in a tiny white plastic case (designed by Rick Dickinson), weight only 340
g, with one piece blue membrane keyboard on the front.

Westwood designed the machine using 21 readily available TTL chips (the only proprietary technology
was the firmware) around Z80 CPU (in fact, most machines used the NEC PD780C-1 equivalent),
running at 3.25 MHz. The computer was equipped with 1 KB of static RAM (64 KB max) and 4 KB
ROM, containing the operating system and programming languageSinclair BASIC, and a editor.

The display was hooks to TV, 22 x 32 black-and-white characters. Ports are memory and casette.
Peripherals supported: Sinclair thermal printer.

IBM PC Model 5150

The biggest computer manufacturer in the worldIBM, was in a difficult situation in 1970s. Despite of
the IBM strategy and multimillion efforts to get into the small computer market, it was dominated by
the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit family, Apple II and Tandy Corporation's TRS-80s, as well as various
CP/M machines.

IBM dominated the market of mini, middle-range and mainframes computers, but didn't achieve even
a small success in the very perspective microcomputers market. IBM's first desktop microcomputer
was the IBM 5100, introduced in 1975. It was a complete system, with a built-in monitor, keyboard,
and data storage, but it was very expensiveup to $20000, so it didn't achieve a market success. It
was specifically designed for professional and scientific problem-solvers, not business users or
hobbyists. Gradually the IBM management began thinking of producing microcomputers as a
profitable business.

When the PC was introduced in 1981, it was originally designated as the IBM 5150, putting it in the
"5100" series, though its architecture wasn't directly descended from the IBM 5100.

The IBM PC was created in about a year by a team of 12 IBM engineers and designers under the
direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. After hesitation
between the Intel 8086 and the Motorola MC68000 (16 bit CPUs), they decided to use the Intel 8088
(8/16 bit) processor, as the two other ones were considered too powerful:-) Then they asked Digital
Research (the creators of CP/M) to create an operating system for their new computer, but as DR was
not very interested, they then asked a small company (known for its BASIC Programming Language,
first used in Altair 8800) to write the operating system: Microsoft.

Microsoft wasn't capable of doing it in the given timeframe, so its owner Bill Gates bought the rights to
a small, hacked OS written by a small company called Seattle Computer Products: QDOS (which
reportedly stood for "Quick and Dirty Operating System", which itself bears a striking resemblance to
CP/M) which became PC-DOS and then later MS-DOS.

In fact, when IBM PC was launched, three operating systems could run on it: PC-DOS, CPM-86, but
also the UCSD D-PASCAL system.

The original IBM PC wasn't very powerful (and was certainly less powerful than lot of 8 bit computers
at the time). The very first PCs had only 16 KB RAM and no floppy disk units, they used cassettes to
load and store programs (notice that the commands to handle the cassette drives were present in the
operating system all the way up to MS-DOS 5). In fact, units could also be purchased from IBM with
drives and more RAM. Only the lowest cost version had no drives included (this is exactly how Atari,
Apple and the other manufacturers did it as well).

27
The model 5150 (see the upper image) was introduced in August, 1981 (see the IBM Personal
Computer brochure). The system unit was a box with size 50.8 (W) x 40.6 (D) x 14 (H) cm, with built-
in 63.5W switching power supply unit. It featured Intel 8008 CPU, working at speed 4.77 MHz, and
an optional math co-coprocessor 8087. The RAM was 64 KB (the very first ones had only 16 KB), 256
KB max. (then later 640 KB max.) The ROM was 64 KB, included built-in language IBM BASIC
(Special Microsoft BASIC-80 version). The keyboard was a full stroke 'clicky' 83 keys with 10 function
keys and numeric keypad. The display was monochrome, working in text mode: (40 or 80 char x 25
lines) or 2 CGA graphic modes: (320 x 200 and 640 x 200). The sound was a tone generator with
built-in speaker. The I/O ports were five internal 8 bit ISA slots, monitor, parallel (Centronics),
cassette. The built in media was one or two 160 KB 5.25'' disk-drives. Three OS are providedMS-
DOS, CP/M-86, USCD Pascal.

Although the IBM PC XT was launched in 1983 (first IBM PC to come with an internal hard drive as
standard), and IBM AT was launched in 1984 (with the new Intel 80286 CPU), IBM continued
production of the original PC in various configurations, for several years. The model types were
followed by a xx version number, i.e. 5150-xx, where the xx represented the included options (amount
of RAM, single or dual floppy disk drive, etc.)

IBM PC 5150 became actually a success due to name and fame of IBM, high quality construction
(especially the keyboard and monitor), great expandability and IBM's decision to publish complete
technical specs. The IBM PC Technical manual included circuit diagrams and the full source code for
the BIOS. While the original IBM PC technology is largely obsolete by today's standards, many are still
in service. As of June 2006, IBM PC and XT models were still in use at the majority of U.S. National
Weather Service upper-air observing sites. The computers were used to process data as it is returned
from the ascending radiosonde, attached to a weather balloon. Factors that have contributed to the
5150 PC's longevity are its flexible modular design, open technical standard making information
needed to adapt, modify, and repair it readily available, use of few special nonstandard parts, and
rugged high-standard IBM manufacturing, the last of which provided for exceptional long-term
reliability and durability. Most newer PCs, by contrast, use special-purpose chips (ASICs)
implementing trend-driven technology which becomes obsolete in a few years, after which the parts
become unavailable.

Osborne 1
Adam Osborne is a British author, book and software publisher, one of the most charming, persuasive,
egotistical, and supremely confident people in the computing field, indeed, in all industry.

Adam Osborne was born in Thailand in 1939 to British parents and spent much of his childhood in
Tamil Nadu in South India, where his father, the writer Arthur Osborne, a devotee of Sri Ramana
Maharshi, helped popularize ideas from Eastern religion in the West. Osborne moved to England as a
teenager and received a degree in chemical engineering from Birmingham University in 1961. He later
received a doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of Delaware and took a job with Shell
Oil in California, but he left Shell in the early 1970s to pursue his interest in computers and technical
writing.

In the mid-1970's Osborne became a computer hobbyist and began self-publishing on computing,
writing a programming manual for Intel's first microprocessor. In 1972 he founded Osborne and
Associates to create a series of easy-to-read computing manuals (long before the For
Dummies... series). By 1977, Osborne Books, as the company had become, had published over 40
computing titles. In 1979, Osborne sold his publishing company to McGraw-Hill. During the same
time, he began writing columns for computer magazines Interface Age and later Infoworld. He was
becoming increasingly convinced that for computers to be truly useful, they needed to be mobile, as
they needed to move with the people who used them and be available whenever and wherever people
were. This was a concept he didn't think the existing companies understood or were prepared to deal
with.

28
The idea of the laptop computer (also known as a notebook computer, notebook, notepad) wasn't a
new one. It was visualized by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC in 1968 and talked of in his 1972 paper as
the Dynabook. The idea was later developed in another Xerox PARC creationNoteTaker. The laptop
is a small portable computer having its primary components (processor, display, keyboard) built into
a single unit capable of battery powered operation, which typically weighs from 1 to 7 kg, depending
upon dimensions, materials, and other variables. As the personal computer became viable in the early
1970s, the thought of a portable personal computer arose.

In March, 1980, at the West Coast Computer Faire, Adam Osborne approached the ex-Intel engineer
(and a nerd from the Homebrew Computer Club, just like Steve Leininger of TRS-80, Apple's Steve
Jobs and Steve Wozniak) Lee Felsenstein with the idea of starting a computer company that would not
only produce an affordable, portable computer, but would offer bundled software with the machine.
Osborne asked Felsenstein to develop the hardware of the portable computer. Using the money from
his publishing business along with venture capital Osborne found Osborne Computer Corp. in
January, 1981.

Following Osborne's specifications, Felsenstein designed a portable computer that had a case with a
carrying handle, could survive being accidentally dropped and would fit under an airplane seat (see
the nearby photo). The machine weighed only 24 pounds, had a 52-column display that would fit on a
five-inch screen, contained a cushioning tube, and had two floppy disk drives. The computer even has
an optional battery pack, so it doesn't have to plugged into the power outlet. To meet the small screen
requirements, Felsenstein stored a full screen's worth of information in memory and gave the users
keys that allowed them to scroll the memory screen across the display. In April, 1981, at the same
West Coast Computer Faire, Adam Osborne introduced the Osborne 1 Personal Business
Computer for initial price $1795.

The Osborne 1 (see the lower image) featured a 5 inch 52-column display, two floppy-disk drives
(capacity 92K), a Z80 microprocessor (working at 4.0 MHz), 64k of RAM, a parallel port (IEEE-488),
and a modem/serial port (see the Technical Manual of Osborne 1). It included a bundled software
package that included the CP/M operating system, the Microsoft MBASIC programming language, the
WordStar word processing package, the SuperCalc spreadsheet program and Digital Research CBASIC
programming language (2000 worth of retail software alone).

Osborne 1 appears to be a huge market hitin September, 1981, Osborne Computer Company has its
first US$1 million sales month. In the first 8 months since its introduction, 11000 Osborne
1 computers ship. The peak sales per month for Osborne 1 personal computers over the course of the
product lifetime was 10000 units, despite the initial business plan for the computer predicting a total
of only 10000 units sold over the entire product lifecycle.

Despite early success, Osborne struggled under heavy competition. Kaypro Computer offered
portables that, like the Osborne 1, ran CP/M and included a software bundle, but Kaypro offered
larger 9 inch display. Apple Computer's offerings had a large software library of their own and with
aftermarket cards, could run CP/M as well. IBM's 16-bit IBM PC was faster, more advanced, and
offered a rapidly growing software library, and Compaq offered a portable computer that was almost
100% compatible with IBM's offering. Osborne's efforts to raise $20 million in capital to rush an IBM-
compatible computer to market were unsuccessful.

Besides the severe competition, Osborne made several heavy management and business errors
difficulty meeting demand, poor quality of the production, overstocking, etc. The final blow occurred
in 1983 when Adam Osborne boasted about an upcoming product months before it could be released,
killing demand for the company's existing products. It is unclear whether this boast was about
the Osborne Executive, which was released in May 1983 for $2495 and featured a 7 inch display and
did not sell as well as its predecessor, or, more likely, the Osborne Vixen, a smaller portable that
promised to offer compatibility not only with earlier Osborne models, but also with MS-DOS, allowing
it to run software designed for IBM and Compaq computers. Dealers rapidly started canceling orders
for the Osborne 1.

Unsold inventory piled up and in spite of dramatic price cutsthe Osborne 1 was selling for $1295 in
July 1983 and $995 by August, the sales did not recover. Losses, already higher than expected,

29
continued to mount, and Osborne declared bankruptcy in September, 1983. This marketing blunder
came to be known as Osborneing and the phrase circulated in Silicon Valley for the next decade.

Osborne emerged from bankruptcy in the mid 1980s and finally released the Osborne Vixen, a
compact portable running CP/M, in 1984. However, the company never regained its early
prominence.

In the 1990s Adam Osborne returned to India, the land of his youth, and started up another company
dealing with computer software. He died in March, 2003.

Commodore 64
The 8-bit home computer Commodore 64 (commonly known as the C64 or C=64), introduced by
Commodore International in January, 1982, was a machine with remarkable market success. Volume
production started sometime in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in
August at a price of $595. During the his lifetime, sales totaled some 17 million units, making it the
best-selling single personal computer model of all time. For a substantial period of time (1983-1986),
the Commodore 64 dominated the market with between 30% and 40% share and 2 million units sold
per year, outselling the IBM PC clones, Apple computers, and Atari computers. Sam Tramiel, a former
Atari president said in a 1989 interview "When I was at Commodore we were building 400 000 C64s a
month for a couple of years."

Part of the Commodore 64 success was because it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores,
and that these machines can be directly plugged into an existing home television without any
modifications. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost.
Improving the reliability, as well as reduce manufacturing costs, eventually, it cost only about $25.00
to manufacture, and the consumer price of the C-64 dropped to around $200.00.

Another part of the Commodore 64 success was because approximately 10000 commercial software
titles were made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office applications, and games.
The machine is also credited with popularizing the computer demo scene. The Commodore 64 is still
used today by some computer hobbyists.

The Commodore 64 home computer see the upper image) remained in production from August 1982
as late as until April 1994. The Operating system was Commodore KERNAL/Commodore BASIC 2.0.
The CPU was MOS Technology 6510, working at 1.02 MHz (NTSC version) or 0.985 MHz (PAL
version). Memory: 64 kB RAM, 20 kB ROM. Display: 25x40 text. Graphics VIC-II (320x200, 16
colors, sprites, raster interrupt). Sound was SID 6581, 3 channels of sound. Ports: TV, RGB &
composite video, 2 joysticks, cartridge port, serial peripheral port. Peripherals: cassette recorder,
printer, modem, external 170K floppy drive.

The Commodore Business Machines was found in 1954 by Jack Tramiel (Jewish, born Idek Trzmiel on
December 13, 1928, in d, Poland, emigrant to the United States in 1947) of Bronx, New York. Later
Tramiel relocates to Toronto and became the biggest manufacturer of low cost office furniture in
Canada. In 1970s Commodore manufactures calculators and digital watches, but gets killed by Texas
Instruments. In 1976 Commodore purchases MOS Technologies, an American maker of IC chips.
MOS' senior engineer, Chuck Peddle was working on the 6502 micro processor, a popular 8 bit
processor that soon would be used in machines like the Apple II, the Atari 800, the Commodore PET
and 64.

In 1977 Commodore launched its first successful computerPET 2001 computer, for US$600. In
1980 Commodore Japan introduces the VIC-1001 (later called the VIC-20 in the USA) US$299, which
appears to be a rather successful machine. During its life, production peaks at 9000 units per day.

30
In January 1981, MOS Technology, initiated a project to design the graphic and audio chips for a next
generation video game console. Design work for the chips, (which will be used in C64), named MOS
Technology VIC-II (graphics) and MOS Technology SID (audio), was completed in November 1981.

At the same time Robert Russell (system programmer and architect on the VIC-20) and Robert
Yannes (engineer of the SID) were critical of the current product line-up at Commodore, which was a
continuation of the Commodore PET line aimed at business users. With the support of Al Charpentier
(engineer of the VIC-II) and Charles Winterble (manager of MOS Technology), they proposed to
Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel a true low-cost sequel to the VIC-20. Tramiel dictated that the
machine should have 64 kB of RAM. Although 64 KB of DRAM cost over 100 USD at the time, he
knew that DRAM prices were falling, and would drop to an acceptable level before full production was
reached. In November, Tramiel set a deadline for the first weekend of January, to coincide with the
1982 Consumer Electronics Show.

The product was codenamed the VIC-40 as the successor to the popular VIC-20. The team that
constructed it consisted of Bob Russell, Bob Yannes and David A. Ziembicki. The design, prototypes
and some sample software was finished in time for the show, after the team had worked tirelessly over
both Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends.

When the product was to be presented, the VIC-40 product was renamed C64 in order to fit into the
current Commodore business products lineup which contained the P128 and the B256, both named by
a letter and their respective memory size.

The C64 made an impressive debut at the January 1982 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, as
recalled by Production Engineer David A. Ziembicki: "All we saw at our booth were Atari people with
their mouths dropping open, saying, 'How can you do that for $595?'" The answer, as it turned out,
was vertical integration; thanks to Commodore's ownership of MOS Technology's semiconductor
fabrication facilities, each C64 had an estimated production cost of only $135.

In 1984, Commodore released the SX64 (see the upper image), a portable C64 with built-in monitor,
floppy drive and power supply.

Apple Macintosh
The Macintosh, or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers, manufactured by Apple Inc.
The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984, by Steve Jobs (see the lower photo) and it
was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature two old known then, but still
unpopular featuresthe mouse and the graphical user interface, rather than the command-line
interface of its predecessors.

Production of the Mac is based on a vertical integration model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its
hardware and creates its own operating system (called System Software, later renamed to Mac OS, see
the lower image) that is pre-installed on all Mac computers. This is in contrast to most IBM
PC compatibles, where multiple sellers create hardware intended to run another company's operating
software. Apple exclusively produces Mac hardware, choosing internal systems, designs, and prices.
Apple also develops the operating system for the Mac, currently Mac OS X version 10.6 "Snow
Leopard". The modern Mac, like other personal computers, is capable of running alternative operating
systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, and, in the case of Intel-based Macs, Microsoft Windows. However,
Apple does not license Mac OS X for use on non-Apple computers.

The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with Jef Raskin (19432005) (see the nearby image),
an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. He
wanted to name the computer after his favorite type of apple, the McIntosh, but the name had to be
changed for legal reasons. In September 1979, Raskin was authorized by the management to start

31
hiring for the project, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype. Bill
Atkinson, a member of Apple's Lisa team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer),
introduced him to Burrell Smith, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the
years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh
hardware and software; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included Chris Espinosa,
Joanna Hoffman, George Crow, Bruce Horn, Jerry Manock, Susan Kare, Andy Hertzfeld, and Daniel
Kottke.

The first Macintosh board, designed by Burrell Smith, had 64 kilobytes (KB) of RAM, used the
Motorola 6809E microprocessor, and was capable of supporting a 256256 pixel black-and-white
bitmap display. Bud Tribble, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisas graphical
programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisas Motorola
68000 microprocessor into the Mac while still keeping the production cost down. By December 1980,
Smith had succeeded in designing a board that not only used the 68000, but bumped its speed from 5
to 8 megahertz (MHz); this board also had the capacity to support a 384256 pixel display.

Smiths design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which made production of the board significantly
more cost-efficient. The final Mac design was self-contained and had the complete QuickDraw picture
language and interpreter in 64 Kb of ROM and 128 KB of RAM. Though there were no memory slots,
its RAM was expandable to 512 KB by means of soldering sixteen chip sockets to accept 256 Kb RAM
chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final product's screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel
monochrome display, exceeding the prototypes.

The design caught the attention of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was
more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the
Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and the final Macintosh design is said
to be closer to Jobs ideas than Raskins. After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being
developed at Xerox PARC, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the Xerox Alto computer and Smalltalk
development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were
partially influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh
group's own ideas.

The Macintosh 128k (see the lower image) was announced to the press in October 1983 and was
introduced in January 1984. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface:
MacWrite and MacPaint. Although the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, some
labeled it a mere "toy." Because the machine was entirely designed around the GUI, existing text-
mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten;
this was a time consuming task that many software developers chose not to undertake, and resulted in
an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984 Microsoft's MultiPlan migrated over from
MS-DOS, followed by Microsoft Word in January 1985. In 1985, Lotus Software introduced Lotus Jazz
after the success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced
Macintosh Office the same year with the lemmings ad.

For a special post-election edition of Newsweek in November 1984, Apple spent more than $2.5
million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also ran a Test Drive a Macintosh
promotion, in which potential buyers with a credit card could take home a Macintosh for 24 hours and
return it to a dealer afterwards. While 200000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion,
the supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad shape
that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the
price from $1995 to $2495.

In 1985, the combination of the Mac, Apples LaserWriter printer, and Mac-specific software like
Boston Softwares MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker enabled users to design, preview, and print
page layouts complete with text and graphics, it was an activity to become known as desktop
publishing. Initially, desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available
for IBM PC users as well. Later, applications such as Macromedia FreeHand, QuarkXPress, Adobe
Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator strengthened the Macs position as a graphics computer and helped
to expand the emerging desktop publishing market.

32
The limitations of the first Mac soon became clear: it had very little memory, even compared with
other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily; and it lacked a hard disk drive or
the means to attach one easily. In October 1985, Apple increased the Macs memory to 512 KB, but it
was inconvenient and difficult to expand the memory of a 128 KB Mac. In an attempt to improve
connectivity, Apple released the Macintosh Plus on January 10, 1986 for $2600. It offered one
megabyte of RAM, expandable to four, and a then-revolutionary SCSI parallel interface, allowing up to
seven peripheralssuch as hard drives and scannersto be attached to the machine. Its floppy drive
was increased to an 800 KB capacity. The Mac Plus was an immediate success and remained in
production, unchanged, until October 15, 1990; on sale for just over four years and ten months, it was
the longest-lived Macintosh in Apple's history.

At its introduction, the Macintosh was targeted for two primary markets: knowledge-workers and
students. Referring to the telephone as the first desktop appliance, Steve Jobs hoped that the
Macintosh would become the second desktop appliance. As Bill Gates stated, To create a new
standard takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something that's really new,
and captures people's imaginations. Macintosh meets that standard.

Through the second half of the 1980s, the company built market share only to see it dissipate in the
1990s as the personal computer market shifted towards IBM PC compatible machines running MS-
DOS and Microsoft Windows.

Poqet PC
In 1987, the Texas Instruments' engineer John Fairbanks (EE'71 from Missouri University of Science
and Technology) started Poqet Computer Co. with his former TI coworker Stav Prodromou (which
became president of Poqet, while Fairbanks was a vice-president), and Robb Wilmot (former
chairman of ICL, the largest British computer company) in the spare room of a colleague's house in
Sunnyvale, California.

The engineering team included John Fairbanks, Leroy Harper, Ian Cullimore and Shinpei Ichikcawa.
Fairbanks and his partners created the remarkable TI-30 calculator in 1970s, and using their
experience they were able to build a remarkable sub-notebook computer.

Using as an industrial partner Fujitsu Ltd., Poqet Co. announced in October, 1989, the brilliant Poqet
PC, a uniquely small and well designed IBM PC compatible computer (see Poqet PC Users Guide).

The size of the machine is: 220 mm 110 mm 25 mm; weight: 540 g with batteries.

The CPU was 80C88, working at 7 MHz. RAM memory: 640 KB SRAM.

The display was a monochrome LCD, 80x25 symbols text, 640x200 pixels graphics.

PCMCIA: 2 Type I memory card slots. Secondary storage: Drive A: 512 KB MB PCMCIA. Drive B:
512 KB PCMCIA. Drive C: Internal 768 KB ROM drive with MS-DOS 3.3, PoqetTools, GW-BASIC,
application programs. Drive D: 22 KB VRAM drive. Drive E: external floppy drive.

Built-in software: MS-DOS 3.3, PoqetLink, and PoqetTools (PoqetCalc, a calculator; PoqetWrite, a
screen editor; PoqetSchedule, a calendar including an appointment scheduler, alarm, and To Do;
PoqetAddress, an address book; PoqetTalk, a communication program). Additional programs (on
PCMCIA ROM cards): Lotus 1-2-3, MetrolExpress and Agenda; WordPerfect; XyWrite; Lucid 3-D;
ACT!

RS-232 and parallel ports are provided by using special cables.

33
The Poqet PC was a revolutionary machine, as regards its power consumption. It was powered only by
two standard AA-size batteries, which can feed the machine for up to 100 working hours, but using an
aggressive power management, which includes "sleeping" (stopping the CPU) between keystrokes and
other actions, slowing down and reducing the voltage whenever it is possible, these batteries were able
to power the computer for anywhere between several weeks and a couple of months, depending on
usage. The computer also uses a special "instant on" feature, such that after powering it down (i.e.
hybernating), it can be used again immediately without having to go through a full boot sequence.

The Poqet PC was dubbed "A one-pound technological marvel" and "The most exciting advancement
in personal computing of the year". In 1989, the year of its introduction, the Byte Magazine gave the
Poqet PC the "Award of Distinction" and PC Magazine gave the Poqet PC the "Award for Technical
Excellence" in the "portables" category.

The machine was launched to the market in March, 1990, initial price was 1995 USD. Fujitsu Co.
initially provided financing support and owned 38% of Poqet Computer, but they eventually bought
100% of the company, and then released the Poqet PC Plus, which has 2MB RAM and a rechargeable
battery, among other improvements. Later Fujitsu moved off in other directions, leaving the Poqet PC
behind.

IBM Simon Personal Communicator

The first smartphone in the worldIBM Simon Personal Communicatorwas announced at the
COMDEX computer and technology trade show in Las Vegas, on November 23, 1992. Although the
term smartphone was not coined until 1997, Simon's features and capabilities (see the Users Manual
of Simon) of a handheld, touchscreen cellular phone and PDA in one device can be referred to
as smartphone.

The announced in 1992 device with code named Angler, allowed a user to make telephone calls, as
well as to work with facsimiles, emails and cellular pages, among other functions. It featured 11 built-
in programs, including a calendar, to-do list, calculator, address book, appointment scheduler, world
time clock, electronic note pad/sketch pad, handwritten annotations and standard and predictive
stylus input screen keyboards.

Simon (dimensions: 200 mm, 64 mm, 38 mm; weight 510 g) featured a Vadem 16 MHz, 16-bit, x86-
compatible CPU. The memory was 1 MB of ROM (read-only memory) and 1 MB of PSRAM (pseudo-
static random-access memory). The connectivity was provided by a 2400-bps Hayes-compatible
modem.

Simon used the operating system Datalight ROM-DOS. IBM created a unique touch-screen user
interface for Simon's 11436 mm, 160x293px monochrome backlit LCD display.

Simon's included NiCad battery lasted about eight hours in standby mode and about one hour under
constant use.

Simon was assembled under contract by Mitsubishi Electric and was distributed by BellSouth Cellular
between August 1994 and February 1995, as some 50000 units were sold.

The venerable Simon might seem quite laughable by today's standards, but it was certainly an
impressive device back in early 1990s. Anyone want to make a guess at what the phones of late 2030s
might possibly look like?

34
35