Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/02/15

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Subject: [Leica] The History of the Personal Computer
From: sonc.hegr at gmail.com (Sonny Carter)
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:56:29 -0600
References: <F6A063A0-9A6E-42B6-B562-2C90ECFD8196@acm.org> <1360941460.62556.YahooMailNeo@web125001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>

Yep, and the Kaypro  http://oldcomputers.net/kayproii.html

It looked like something that belonged in an USAF equipment rack.  I liked
it because it had a wonderful keyboard that was just like a Selectric,  the
9 inch monitor, while small, had fully formed letters, and the printer was
not a dot matrix POS.  All in all, the problem was they took too long to go
to MS/dos operating sysstem from C/PM and got left behind.

It was my first computer, and I loved it.





On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 9:17 AM, Bill Clough <bill_clough at yahoo.com> 
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.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>



-- 
Regards,

Sonny
http://sonc.com/look/
Natchitoches, Louisiana

USA


In reply to: Message from kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner) ([Leica] The History of the Personal Computer)
Message from bill_clough at yahoo.com (Bill Clough) ([Leica] The History of the Personal Computer)