[Leica] The History of the Personal Computer

[kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner)]

The account I wrote was based on a tour I give at the Computer History 
Museum. The theme of the tour was devices which had a profound side effect, 
e.g., without the Altair event, there might have not been a Microsoft 
corporation, the Apples generated another huge corporation, the PC inspired 
clones and took over the business world, and, finally, the Mac, in addition 
being the first (I have been told) to have facilities for photo processing, 
inspired the creation by Microsoft of Windows.

Left out, among others, were some very popular devices, e.g. the Commodore 
64 and a personal favorite, the Commodore Pet.

I must mention something that really frightened me. In 2001, I had fancy 
radiation therapy for prostate cancer. One session was long delayed because 
of a problem with the computer that controlled the machine. I asked what it 
was, and the scary answer was a PC running Windows 2000.

Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org
650-326-8204

Question authority and the authorities will question you.




On Feb 15, 2013, at 7:17 AM, Bill Clough wrote:

> Herbert--
> 
>    There is something here. I often see this same history and, always, the 
> Radio Shack TRS-80 is left out, which is unfortunate, considering that any 
> town large enough to have a Dairy Queen has a Radio Shack.
> 
>    I was Tandy's first computer instructor--teaching hundreds of people 
> application programs and the BASIC language. I did this for five years. If 
> you bought an Apple computer in those days, the instruction book was 
> mimeographed with the first sentence saying to turn on the computer and 
> type in CALL and then giving a register.
> 
>    Meanwhile, owners of Tandy computers had professionally printed 
> instruction books that also were textbooks, beginning with LEVEL 1 BASIC, 
> followed by LEVEL II and DISK BASIC. I averaged a class a day, including 
> evening classes and Saturday classes, and usually filled all the 32 seats. 
> Yet the Tandy machine, based on the Z-80 chip, still is tarnished with the 
> label "Trash-80."
> 
>    Tandy's mistake, of course, was to bind their users to the TRS 
> operating system. Across the patio from the radio shack computer store in 
> Dallas where I worked, IBM opened a store to sell its PC, which was open 
> source.
> 
>    The rest is history.
> 
>    I am, in no way, trying to diminish Apple's role in the PC market. I'm 
> typing this on an Apple. But Tandy was there, too, and its significance, 
> sadly, seems to be ignored.
> 
> Bill Clough
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Herbert Kanner <kanner at acm.org>
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org> 
> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2013 4:30 PM
> Subject: [Leica] The History of the Personal Computer
> 
> People often ask:  "What was the first personal computer?" That is a 
> futile query; it depends too much on the definition of personal computer, 
> a definition that can be quite flexible. So what I'm going to cover here 
> are the personal computers that had a significant effect on the future.
> 
> First is the Altair, circa 1975. It was advertised as a $400 kit in 
> Popular Electronics magazine and the company in Albuquerque, MITS, was 
> swamped with orders. 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002888.jpg.html
> 
> Two young squirts, Bill Gates and Paul Allen phoned MITS and said they had 
> a Basic (programming language) interpreter for the Intel 8080 chick what 
> was its "brain". They actually had not even started programming the 
> interpreter, but fortunately for their enterprise, MITS told them that it 
> would be about a month before they actually had an assembled and working 
> kit.
> When Paul Allen flew to Albuquerque and demonstrated the interpreter, 
> typing "Print 2+2" and getting back "4" the MITS people were astounded; it 
> was the first time they had actually seen their computer do anything.
> 
> Here is a picture of the Altair. Until the the programs enabling it 
> enabling it to read paper tape and use a keyboard are loaded, it had to be 
> programming one bit at a time using the toggle switches on the front, and 
> until it had the program for driving a printer, results had to be read one 
> bit at a time from those lights on the front. It was clearly originally 
> intended as a toy for a hobbyist.
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002887.jpg.html
> 
> The effect on the future was: Bill Gates and Paul Allen licensed MITS to 
> use their interpreter and created a company named Micro-Soft, later to be 
> renamed Microsoft.
> 
> Next is the Apple 1, circa 1976. Steve Wozniak built one for his personal 
> use, showed it off at the Homebrew Computer Club, and his buddy, Steve 
> Jobs, decided they could make some money from it. He beat the bushes and 
> found a store called The Byte Shop in Mountain View, CA that was willing 
> to take fifty of them at $500 each and mark them up 1/3, to an unrounded 
> price of $666.66. The Steves were under the illusion that all they had to 
> supply was a printed circuit board and a bag of parts. The Byte Shop 
> disillusioned them and a frantic assembly and testing operation ensued. 
> The printed card in front of the artifact is therefore erroneous, and I'm 
> waiting for the Museum to update it. The company, Apple Computer, was 
> created at that time. The user still had to furnish a keyboard and a 
> television set as the monitor.
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002890.jpg.html
> 
> The Apple 2 appeared one year later. You can already see the fine hand of 
> Steve Jobs sculpting the external appearance of the device. In the first 
> version, cassette tape was the medium for loading programs, but later 
> versions provided an operating system for floppy disks. Two years later, 
> 1979, Dan Bricklin and Bob Franskton market the first spread sheet, 
> Visicalc. It was so appealing that Apple salesmen could walk into a 
> business establishment with an Apple 2 under their arm, demonstrate 
> Visicalc, and the proprietor would be sufficiently impressed to buy the 
> computer. My personal opinion is that this success may have been what 
> persuaded IBM to produce the IBM PC in 1981; they realized that such 
> devices were than a toy and that there could be serious market for them.
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002895.jpg.html
> 
> 
> In 1985, IBM introduced the first model of the PC. To a certain extent, 
> their heart was not entirely in it. All IBM equipment, prior and since, 
> was completely manufactured by IBM: hardware, software, the lot. But the 
> PC was an exception. The computer chips came from Intel. The operating 
> system came from Microsoft, which bought it from Seattle Software. Except 
> for the physical box, the only IBM contribution was the software for 
> communication with a floppy disk, known as "BIOS" for Basic Input Output 
> System.
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002897.jpg.html
> 
> Who can forget the amazing Super Bowl commercial that introduced the 
> Macintosh in 1984. Here is a picture of the original Macintosh model. It's 
> screen was monochrome and didn't even have gray scale; it could just draw 
> fine lines with remarkable resolution.
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002900_001.jpg.html
> 
> 
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
> 
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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