History of Computing exam question

From: Kent Borg <kentborg_at_borg.org>
Date: Tue Dec 4 08:56:17 2001

On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 03:43:26PM -0600, Mark Tapley wrote:
> Mac 128k
> GUI OS for the masses, origin of "friendly" computers
> (first computer to *smile* at me).

If you want origins of GUI, maybe you want a Xerox Star or maybe Apple
Lisa. If you want something more mainstream I think the Macintosh
Plus is more appropriate. Allowing 4 MB of RAM, an 800 KB floppy, and
most importantly, a SCSI port. A Mac Plus with a hard disk was
actually a very useful machine. A 128 K Mac was mostly promise and
expensive dreams.

I guess it depends upon what you want in the museum. Do you want
something that is in some way typical or failures that showed the
first glimmer?

> Newton
> PDA origin.

I was a Newton user for two models. But you might consider the first
Palm Pilot instead. I didn't get a Palm until the wireless Palm VII,
but the original was a sweet machine that hit its target dead on.
Other than wireless (which is under appreciated) I am not sure any of
the later Palm models are more than incremental additions to the
original.

> NeXT Cube (original)
> OO system, sizeable leap in developer environment quality

Steve already got his Macintosh on the list. You already have a
personal-sized Unix machine on the list. I don't think the nExT gets
in.

And the DEC Rainbow seems not worthy. DEC already gets two entries on
your list with successful computers. The Rainbow was part of the fall
of the company.

The Alpha is also too obscure for such a small museum. Especially now
that we see it dying.

I am not sure what else should go off the list (some I don't know
about and maybe should), but having dumped three, I think the
following need to be added:

- Altair. Too much hinged on the Altair to leave it out,
                including Bill's first product, a BASIC interpreter.
                Hook up a Lear Sieger ADM-1 (?) terminal and that hand
                pulled optical papertape reader I used to drool over.

- Apple II. A breakthrough computer that made a real splash with
                both hackers and lots of real people, a splash that
                lasted for years. Extraordinarily influential
                computer.

- IBM XT The original PC made micros respectable (and gave
                them a new name) but the XT was nearly the same and
                with its hard disk is representative of much of what
                we use today. Some early model PC is needed to
                represent the beginning of the explosion that is just
                now cooling. The little Vaio on your list is a nice
                entry to catch the other end. (I nominate the model
                I am typing on now, a Z505LE.)

- HP Calculator Donno what model, probably their best selling
                programmable.


I sadly don't include an early Macintosh Powerbook or TRS-80 Model 1.
The Model 1, though important, is a too much of a side road. The
Powerbook is covered by the early Macintosh and the Vaio. I also
don't include an early Compaq; the Vaio is also the clone
representative.

And attach an ASR-33 to the PDP.


-kb, the Kent who never got an ASR-33.
Received on Tue Dec 04 2001 - 08:56:17 GMT