OT: Who invented the Personal Computer?

[ChuckT]

According to this link, Altair invented the personal computer.

http://www.history.com/topics/invention ... -of-the-pc

According to this link, Steve Wozniak invented the personal computer:

http://gizmodo.com/5926688/how-steve-wo ... l-computer

According to this link, the Programma 101 was invented in 1962 by an Italian company called Olivetti.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer

So, who invented the personal computer?

[BigDumbDinosaur]

ChuckT wrote:

So, who invented the personal computer?

Isn't it like trying to determine who invented the wheel?

[barrym95838]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

ChuckT wrote:

So, who invented the personal computer?

Isn't it like trying to determine who invented the wheel?

Yeah, my take on it is that the words "personal" and "computer" aren't sufficiently specific, and when you put them together, the definition is further diluted, almost to the point of meaninglessness.

Mike B.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barrym95838 wrote:

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

ChuckT wrote:

So, who invented the personal computer?

Isn't it like trying to determine who invented the wheel?

Yeah, my take on it is that the words "personal" and "computer" aren't sufficiently specific, and when you put them together, the definition is further diluted, almost to the point of meaninglessness.

Mike B.

I tend to agree. If I purchase an IBM 360 and am the only one using it, isn't it a "personal computer?"

[GARTHWILSON]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

ChuckT wrote:

So, who invented the personal computer?

Isn't it like trying to determine who invented the wheel?

or the TV?

In the early years, I myself was interested in stereo and amateur radio, not computers. How things changed and I got into computers is in my head post in the "Introduce yourself" topic. I hope you'll find it entertaining. However, it's interesting looking back at various steps in the history of computers in general and the personal computer in particular. I've watched a lot of videos on computer history to fill in the holes that were left in my own mind since I had not been very interested yet at the time. The internet didn't exist yet. We had electronics magazines and there was more and more computer stuff in them but I did not pay much attention to that part, thinking it was kind of pointless, because at the time, computers weren't powerful enough to be of any practical value yet. When I did start getting interested, it was for doing repetitive calculations for circuit design, which is what got me into programmable calculators at the end of 1981. Many of you will remember the early TV ads for home computers that said you needed one to balance your check book. That was sure stretching it, particularly since they still cost so much and everyone had a calculator by then (although most were not programmable).

I remember the first time I heard the word "software." Back in the days when people either mowed their own lawn or paid the neighbor kid to do it (instead of getting illegal-alien gardeners), I was hired by a young couple down at the corner to mow their lawn. I talked with them and found out what they did. The woman worked on computers. That was about 1975 or '76, when computers occupied large rooms with a lot of air conditioning to cool them and keep their temperature and humidity within acceptable limits. Most people had never seen a computer, and it seemed like those who worked with them were next to God or something. I asked this woman something about the computer, and she said she didn't know-- that she was strictly a software person. The term seemed like a joke. Everyone has heard of hardware (tools, plumbing, bolts, paint, etc.); but software??

The automated test setups I did were at the company I worked at from 1985-1992. When I started there, the only computer in the company was an Apple II. Then in '86, the boss bought an IBM PC clone that was portable. This was back when you could put a handle on a refrigerator and call it portable. It did not mean "light" and "practical to carry around." It had an 8088, and in the front there was a 7" monochrome green CRT and a pair of 5.25" low-density floppy-disc drives. I think it came with MS-DOS 2.0 or 2.1. I had made a better manually operated tester for our products than what was there when I started at the company, and then the boss and I started talking about using a computer to control the testing so the test operator didn't have to be as smart, and the tester would prevent the possibility of misreading a meter, forgetting a step, etc.. I hired a technician and told him about the idea to do automated testing. Immediately he was a self-proclaimed PC expert; and although he knew more about IBM PCs than I, he was mostly talk. He said he could write a set of utilities we could use for the test equipment, and he made himself at home with that "portable" PC. At one point, he asked me if Bob might spring for a hard disc, when they were 5MB or 10MB. I laughed at him, because of the price and because HDDs still held the equivalent of very few floppies. (The automated testing that did become reality was always controlled by something other than a PC.)

The idea of the "paperless office" was brewing in the boss's mind. In probably about 1987, before getting that far, he had the sales people on terminals that hooked into a single Altair computer that serviced them all, running BASIC. About three years later, he had a consultant come in and put PCs on every desk, and network them with Novell. Individual PCs had no disc drives, but booted off the network, and files were maintained at a central point in the office. This man was obviously in over his head, and you could tell. Eventually he got it all going, but it was rough getting there.

It seems like every company I've worked for was smaller than the previous one. I started at the company I'm at now in 1992 (although it has evolved so much it's debatable whether it's really the same company or not). This was soon after its start-up and it had no computer at all yet, just a typewriter. Eventually the owner got into high-end Macs.

[GARTHWILSON]

I've already gotten a bit off the topic of who invented the personal computer, talking about observations and experiences in PC history, but I'll throw in some more tid bits anyway. I remember when the PCMCIA cards came out. These were the size of a credit card, and there was 32KB battery-backed RAM, then 64KB, then 128KB, then 256KB! I wondered, "How far is this going to go, anyway?!" Our older son just got a couple of microSD cards with 64GB for less money, and he said there was 128GB available too. Here's a standard-sized SD card with half a terabyte, with transfer speeds up to 95MB/second! (It's not cheap though.)

In the mid 1980's, the Psion Organiser, an early PDA, came out. Wikipedia writes (as I remember) that it "supported removable storage write-once devices which used EPROM storage. The machine could host two of these so-called DATAPAKs (or simply PAKs), to which it could write data but which needed to be removed from the machine and erased by being exposed to ultraviolet light before they could be re-used."

In 1980 or so, a man suggested making an audio "tape recorder" that used no moving parts, digitizing the audio and putting it in memory (as if he were the first one to think of it). I immediately told him why that was totally out of the question, keeping in mind the size and cost of the required memory. How things have changed.

[cr1901]

Tbh, I thought it was John Blankenbaker. He invented the Kenbak-1 some 44 years ago and runs a website on it.

I wonder if he could anticipate that we would need machines millions of times more powerful just to display web content ?

[BigEd]

Speaking of terminals, and the invention of the personal computer, the story of the Datapoint 2200 is quite pertinent: it was announced in 1970 as an intelligent terminal, but was at the same time a personal computer by stealth - they didn't want to frighten the company shareholders. The CPU is built of logic chips, but the company asked both Intel and Texas Instruments to put the functionality in a chip. TI didn't succeed. By the time Intel was successful, the company decided they didn't need a one-chip CPU, so instead of paying the $50k for the project, they signed the IP over to Intel. Who in due course sold the chip, initially as the 1201, as the 8008. And so a billion-dollar microarchitecture was invented by a terminal company, for free. The designers did get a design patent on the design of the machine, and like to tout it as the first personal computer.

"the legendary Intel 8008 was a custom chip implementing the Datapoint 2200 instruction set (Intel at the time was a memory company, and didn't really want to make the 8008 for Computer Terminal Corporation (later, Datapoint Corporation) because Intel at the time was convinced that there was no market for a general-purpose 8-bit microprocessor on a chip! But Datapoint at the time was the world's largest buyer of MOS memories, and Intel wanted Datapoint as a memory customer...!)"
From the accompanying text to this later promo video from the company - which mentions the 2200 about 1:18 to 1:46.


Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrJiYysZwxk - a tour of the insides
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article ... origins_pc
http://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... sonal.html
http://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... -2200.html
http://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... an-as.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200

[Tor]

There were microcomputers out there earlier in the seventies than many of us were aware of - at the time I didn't know about personal computers or microcomputers until the magazine with the Altair on the front page came out. Some of those early personal computers (three to five years before the Altair) I learned about just months ago. For example the Micral from 1973.

Then there was the woman with the [edit[*]] minicomputer she kept at home somewhen in the sixties.. for all practical purposes a personal computer. But I can't remember her name.

-Tor

[*]Edit: Thanks Ed - so a LINC, not a PDP, but I knew there was some kind of Digital connection there..

[BigEd]

Yes, that's Mary Allen Wilkes, 1965:
"I've always considered the LINC to be the first real personal computer. There were single user small machines before, but none of them had the combinations of I/O (display, keyboard, etc.) and low cost of the LINC. The feel of the LINC was the feel of personal computing… The LINC could actually be built by its owner (that's how the first few were made) and cost about $20K. So, in today's terms, it would be a workstation."
- Gordon Bell, quoted at
http://www.digibarn.com/stories/linc
Via https://plus.google.com/+DavidGalloway/ ... zoZPDUnMyn which has an interview with her.

See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC
At the time, DEC made logic modules, from which the MIT people made the LINC. It seems DEC later made use of the ideas and adapted the machine into its own product line.

From http://www.digibarn.com/collections/sys ... rticle.htm:

[ChuckT]

Ed,

Thank you. That is very informative and very very helpful.

I found another link that says the first personal computer was Simon by Edmund Berkeley but I will see what everyone else thinks.

Pop Quiz: What was the first personal computer?
http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml

https://archive.org/details/howtobuilda ... uter_jun67

[ElEctric_EyE]

IMO, the definition of a modern personal computer must consist of the words RAM, ROM and CPU. Keyword: modern

[floobydust]

Tough question overall... I also think that anyone who used a computer system for personal use could pretty much call it a personal computer, but I also tend to think that size matters.... i.e., I learned Fortran on an IBM System 3 model 10 back in the early 70's... using the higher density and much smaller 96-column cards. Not much of a personal computer in my view... as it took 3-phase power to run and a large amount of space to house it. You also needed to keypunch to get the data into cards... and the System 3 used a card unit to load programs and data and also output data back to cards.

IBM announced the 5100 in 1975 and the 5110 in 1978 both from GSD (General Systems Division). These units were small enough to be lugged around and could be used at work or home. I worked in GSD from 1979 - 1984, then transferred to Boca Raton to provide level 2 support for the IBM PC and the full follow-on line of PC based products for many years. Still, I think one could consider these to be personal computers in an IBM flavor and ran APL and BASIC.

It was also not well known that the IBM Displaywriter product (IBM's early word processing machine from Office Products Division (OPD... I worked there from 1977 - 1979)) used an Intel 8086 chip with all of the operating software in ROM. Dislplaywrite came out as IBM's word processing package on the IBM PC... which was a direct port of the Displaywriter ROM based code.

[BigEd]

In that Blinkenlights reverse timeline (which is recommended reading) they offer several necessary characteristics:
digital, automatic, programmable, widely available, smallish, affordable, no training course needed.

Just as with 'what was the first computer' it's necessary to qualify what you're prepared to accept. For consumers, something being commercially available would be important but for historians an unreliable one-off but technically adequate machine would be interesting.

For more on 1949's Simon see
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/

[Tor]

Well. The Kenbak-1 is a kind of personal computer, modern in some ways, and sold from 1971. But it had serial memory (shift registers) and no microprosessor (too early for that, so its CPU was made from logic chips). The Scelbi was a kit and used a microprocessor, the 8008, and used RAM for memory (not shift registers). It was announced in 1974. Then came the 8080-based Altair in 1975, pre-made or as a kit. But before that there was the Micral-N, the first one was sold in January 1973. It was also 8008-based, but in other respects it did everything the later Altair did. It had a bus which could accomodate memory boards and communication boards, used tty and paper tape, and was used for data collection and process control, as it was designed to replace unaffordable PDP minicomputers. It even had a similar style front panel. But it was a French design and thus unknown to the US market, and forgotten. But with the existence of the Micral-N it's impossible to state that the Altair was the first personal computer - you will either have to give that title to the Micral, or instead define an even earlier computer (e.g. the Kenbak, or even the LINC) to be the first one.

-Tor