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The question "who invented the personal computer?"
As you well know, what would be considered a personal desktop computer today differs greatly from the original models.
The issue lies in trying to determine what the first machine to cross the line into the realm of personal computers is.
Was It Apple? Or IBM?
Defining a personal computer is an issue in it of itself.
Many would claim that it is a computer whose size, price and features make it feasible for a home user.
Using that criteria, some would argue that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple Inc., were the first to develop it with the Apple I in 1976.
This groundbreaking piece of equipment came with RAM and CPU but it would not be considered a personal computer by today's standards.
On the other hand, IBM was the first company to use the term "personal computer," or "PC" as it is more popularly called today, for their product released in 1981.
It was developed by a group of engineers headed by William Lowe and set the tone for personal computers for years to come.
It had many of the features you would look for in a personal computer today, though it was obviously far less advanced.
Its price adjusted for inflation was almost $4,000, a little pricey for today's desktop models.
Or Was It The Computer Terminal Corporation?
The ancestor of both of these, however, and a machine that some would call a personal computer dates back to 1970.
Jack Frassanito was an industrial designer hired by a San Antonio-based company called Computer Terminal Corporation.
The machine he created was the first to have all the circuits for a CPU on a microchip rather than circuit boards.
The resulting computer, named the Datapoint 2200, was sold to offices and corporations, but with a price tag equivalent to $5,000 today, it was not marketed to home users.
Still, the technology employed laid the groundwork for what would later become personal computers.
It is impossible to say which of the personal computer companies actually invented the personal computer.
As you well know, what would be considered a personal desktop computer today differs greatly from the original models.
The issue lies in trying to determine what the first machine to cross the line into the realm of personal computers is.
Was It Apple? Or IBM?
Defining a personal computer is an issue in it of itself.
Many would claim that it is a computer whose size, price and features make it feasible for a home user.
Using that criteria, some would argue that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple Inc., were the first to develop it with the Apple I in 1976.
This groundbreaking piece of equipment came with RAM and CPU but it would not be considered a personal computer by today's standards.
On the other hand, IBM was the first company to use the term "personal computer," or "PC" as it is more popularly called today, for their product released in 1981.
It was developed by a group of engineers headed by William Lowe and set the tone for personal computers for years to come.
It had many of the features you would look for in a personal computer today, though it was obviously far less advanced.
Its price adjusted for inflation was almost $4,000, a little pricey for today's desktop models.
Or Was It The Computer Terminal Corporation?
The ancestor of both of these, however, and a machine that some would call a personal computer dates back to 1970.
Jack Frassanito was an industrial designer hired by a San Antonio-based company called Computer Terminal Corporation.
The machine he created was the first to have all the circuits for a CPU on a microchip rather than circuit boards.
The resulting computer, named the Datapoint 2200, was sold to offices and corporations, but with a price tag equivalent to $5,000 today, it was not marketed to home users.
Still, the technology employed laid the groundwork for what would later become personal computers.
It is impossible to say which of the personal computer companies actually invented the personal computer.
Spacewar and the PDP-10 "Ready or not, computers are coming to the people," wrote Stewart Brand in Rolling Stone in 1972. "That good news, maybe the best since psychedelics." Brand penned this very sixties-ish comment after watching various techies at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory play Spacewar on a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10.
The PDP-10 was a big machine which cost around $500,000. When surrounded by its necessary accoutrements, it pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of your typical computer room. It was the device used by the early ARPANET, the forerunner to the modern Internet.
But the PDP-10 was also miles ahead of previous machines in terms of convenience and cost. And thanks to the innovation of time sharing—microsecond multitasking systems that allowed hundreds of programmers to use the same mainframe simultaneously—the PDP created a new user experience.
"Of all the early time-sharing systems, the PDP-10 best created an illusion that each user was being given the full attention and resources of the computer," Cerruzi writes. "That illusion, in turn, created a mental model of what computing could be."
The PDP-10.
Calculators:
The small handheld calculating devices of the early 1970s also made personal computing seem more possible. These used ever more sophisticated integrated circuits. Earlier calculators from Hewlett-Packard and Olivetti cost just under $5,000 and $3,000 respectively. The Bowmar company rocked the 1971 Christmas market with a Bowmar Brain that cost a mere $250.
From this point onward, calculators got cheaper and more powerful. They now cost $50 by 1976. The more expensive ones could perform unheard of tasks: logarithms; complex trigonometry. "Within a few years the slide rule joined the mechanical calculator on the shelves of museums" Cerruzi notes.
They were also programmable. In the 1970s, I remember that my father, an electrical engineer, bought a relatively expensive device, which, if you correctly followed a long ritual of number/letter inputting instructions, allowed you to play a simple game. What I did not realize at the time was that what I was doing with all that initial input was writing a computer program into an interpreter. The code, unfortunately, could not be compiled, and therefore had to be recreated each time I wanted to play. But someone had gone to the trouble of creating this process on a little hand-held gadget.
Calculator users, as much as the more widely celebrated mainframe "hackers" of computer lore, created the market for PCs. There were tens of thousands more calculator users than hackers, Cerruzi observes. "Their numbers—only to increase as the prices of calculators dropped—were the first indication that personal computing was truly a mass phenomenon."
