Do you remember the sound of a fountain pen scribbling on the paper? Or a traditional phone ringing? Or the anxiety when you have to ask a stranger for directions because you forgot your map and are lost in the city?
Can you imagine your life without a PC at all? You know, back in the 70., personal computers were used mostly for simple calculations and even simpler games. Today our smartphones are more powerful than computers that helped NASA scientists fly the man to the moon in 1969!
It’s funny that it took us so little time to incorporate PCs in our everyday life, in all our experiences. It’s the most basic way we express ourselves, relate to other people, learn new skills and earn money.
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Go back with us for a sentimental journey to an ancient era, when we perceived floppy disc as a horn of plenty and were tantalized by the idea of the first spreadsheet.
Archeology of PC: Calculators and typing machines
Philosophers and inventors have been dreaming of more efficient means of computing since always. The first big discovery in that field was Leibniz’s machine; it could add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers.
In 1822 English mathematician, Charles Babbage came up with a steam computing machine and described the concept of a programmable computer.
The next step was Turing machine: see how it worked:
World War II
World War II marks the beginning of powerful calculating machines, used for military purposes . One of these was Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC). “It cost $500,000, weighed 30 tons and took up nearly 2,000 square feet of floor space” (History.com). Press called it “a Giant Brain”.
ENIAC, Moore School of Engineering and Applied Science. Copyright 2005 Paul W Shaffer, University of Pennsylvania.
The microprocessor
It was obvious that the tool has potential, but needed to be more compact. To achieve that inventors tried the transistor, then integrated circuit (microchip): it brought to live devices such as Kenbak-1 (1971).
Or the wonder of soviet thought, MIR computer.
But the real revolution was the microprocessor.
In 1971, Ted Hoff, an engineer at Intel invented the first microprocessor. It was called 4004 and had the same computing power as ENIAC.
By LucaDetomi at it.wikipedia (Transfered from it.wikipedia) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons
The first personal computer using a microprocessor was French machine, Micral, designed in France by the dueAndré Truong Trong Thi and Francois Gernelle in 1973.
I, Deep silence [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
A hipster hobby
So PC could become cheaper and ready to conquer the mass market. But how to sell them? In the beginning, customers ordered sets to construct on their own at home. It was build-it-yourself kind of thing, addressed mostly to tech-maniacs. Computers were discussed in magazines for enthusiasts like Popular Electronics or Radio-Electronics.
Altair 8800 by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems was one of the computers of that kind (1974)
By Swtpc6800 en:User:Swtpc6800 Michael Holley (Transfered from en.wikipedia) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Simultaneously two other guys, Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, were working at Apple I.
In 1977, they launched Apple II. It has a color screen, a cassette tape and a spreadsheet program called VisiCalc.
Computers you don’t have to build yourself
Tech-enthusiasts weren’t the biggest target group possible, so producers started to address the mass market and sell fully assembled computers, with a monitor, a keyboard and a software.
Apple ad from 1978 depicted a new life in personal computer era: a PC was to be multifunctional: it served at work and at home, could be used for learning and for entertainment by all family members.
While Apple focused on schools, IBM focused on individual users and businessmen, tempting them with CPU model. Back then people could imagine an office without a computer, but it was about to change.
1982 was called “A Year of the Computer” by “Time” magazine. Also, in the USA alone 10 million computers were in use.
Cheaper Clones
By Evan-Amos (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Then lawsuits put an end to it. At the same time, producers tried to cut costs and deliver cheaper PCs. Commodore 64 won that race: it’s the best selling PC of all times.
GUI
Another step on the way to make computers more user-friendly was implementing graphic user interface: that way using a computer doesn’t require typing commands, but involves more natural and intuitive moving and clicking onscreen icons and images.
The first Apple computer do it was infamous Lisa 2: too expensive and too slow. It was followed by the success of Macintosh.
In 1986, Microsoft introduced Windows 1.0, which emulated the Apple approach.
Marketing
PCs were no longer a toy for nerds and the market was huge. It entailed fierce marketing competition. In 1984 Apple issues legendary ad:
One year later, in 1985, the first dot-com domain has been registered. But that’s another story.
The third way
The market was dominated by two forces defining the battlefield (Microsoft + IBM vs. Apple) and followed by insignificant small players.
“I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional…)”, Linus Torvalds wrote back in 1991. In 2009 around 10 million computers were running it.
Linux operating system was released in 1994 and changed the perspective. While Apple and Microsoft delivered tools to help people express themselves, create and work, Linux was about community, participation, and sharing. Linux users were a group of co-builders, not consumers.
What do you remember?
The history of computers is short and most of us could see it develop. What do you remember most? Your first PC? Computer games you used to play? The birth of the Internet? Share in comments!
Resources
When researching the post, we used the following materials:
Invention of the PC, History.com
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