[Leica] The History of the Personal Computer

[images at comporium.net (Tina Manley)]

My first computer was the TRS-80 and I still have it!  I was home-schooling
my kids and needed a computer for their lessons.  They learned to write
programs for simple games.  The school board members who made unscheduled
visits to check me out were very impressed.

Tina

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 10:17 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.
>
>
>
>
>
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>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>


-- 
Tina Manley, ASMP
www.tinamanley.com