I got so busy the past couple weeks, I didn't get to chime in sooner :D I did speak at VCF SW over this past weekend, on this topic related to the first personal computer. I'm not the best of speakers, and it was limited to an hour discussion. Jay will hopefully have the video recording up before the end of this month, but he does have a lot of VCF talks to process.
I'm sure I made some mistakes or misspoke on a few aspects, but hopefully I didn't overly misrepresent anything. The approach I tried to take wasn't really to answer what was "first" but to give a broader context on how computers became "domesticated" in the form of "another home appliance." To me, "personal" was never really about the number of users - but more about who bought the thing. So regardless of whatever it can do, if you bought it, it's yours - and you can control and make decisions about its usage. It's not limited to certain hours of the day for you to use, no department chief dictates what types of processing is going on, etc. Also when we say "personal computer", most are generally implicitly meaning "home personal computer" -- since any business computer is generally owned by the business, with (usually) restrictions on what you can do with it. So by that criteria, to me, a computer costing more than a car doesn't count as personal (relative to their initial retail advertised cost at the year of release). I'd also add that a "personal computer" also needs to be relocated by yourself (as its owner). The weight or bulk criteria on that will be subjective (since some people are super strong, or some people have handicap where they hardly lift anything), But you should basically be able to set up that computer on your own, and relocate it to a different room on your own (maybe with a cart). i.e. this eliminates most "desk sized" computers as a criteria. None of my talk covers aspects like this - since, again, my focus was highlighting that journey throughout the 1970s. I had really nearly 100 more slides to go through in the presentation, but it was time limited and so I had to try to speed through some aspects. I'll have the full slide deck in a VCF video description once they've proceed through it. -Steve L (v*) On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 8:42 PM Vincent Slyngstad via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 6/7/2024 6:19 PM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > > OK, I have to chime in here. I worked for Artronix about 1972. The LINC > > computer was developed at MIT for use in biomedical research labs, and a > > bunch of people involved with it later moved to Washington University in > > St. Louis. The Biomedical Computer Lab there later added some features > > such a a crude memory mapping unit and more memory, and called this the > > Programmed Console, so as not to scare people away. Artronix began > > building these PC's and selling them to hospitals for radiation therapy > > planning. I have no idea how many were sold. They were built into a > > desk, and used 7400-series logic chips. They etched their own PC > > boards, drilled them by hand and soldered in the chips by hand. I wrote > > a series of diagnostics for them. > > Do any survive? I've looked for them but never found one. > > Vince > >
