Firsts

From: Francois Auradon <francois.auradon_at_worldnet.att.net>
Date: Sun Jan 11 13:16:42 1998

>You missed calculators and there are rough catagories:
>
>First eletronic calc
>
>first pocket calc
>
>HP35 $700, the lowcost market breaker being the Bomar Brain.
>
>First programable calc

Good point here thank you. By the way the list was not exhaustive pleas feel
free to add anything and everything you want.
>
>
><first personal computer (I think I know that one)
>
>If you mean PC (as in the IBM PC) then the answer is IBM. However if you
>man pc as in personally owned computer, then you go back by maybe 10-20

What I meant by personal computer was computers mass produced for the home
market. But the rest is still good. What was the first computer to enter the
home (coming from the industry)?


><first portable computer
>
>Define portable as I'd seen totables in the late 70s. One very nice one
>was an expanded EVK68 board in a classy wood case with a small crt and
>keyboard.
My interpretation of portable is a computer that is meant to be moved from
place to place fairly easilly: that means integrated monitor, disk drive (or
tape player), a carrying handle (or two).
>
>One that comes to mind was the HP(5100?) complete packaged system with
>tape for storage and basic and GPIB for external interface.
>
><first laptop
>
>Not sure but it wasnt a dos based for sure. Tandy trs100 or the similar
>NEC, Epson, and others.
>
><first GUI
>
>Xerox PARC smalltalk
>
><first OS
>
>This is real old likely in the late 40s early 50s and was likely a
>machine monitor system to load/save programs. Even the PDP-1 had an OS
>to timeshare multiple users. You may have to be more specific as to tthe
>type or style of OS as there are several and the appearance of each
>corosponds to emerging concepts in computing.
>
>Allison
>
Received on Sun Jan 11 1998 - 13:16:42 GMT