When was personal computer invented

That was the plan with the Commodore PET since it was the first successful mass-marketed personal computer last January But it was back-ordered, causing a delay for its release later that year. Fun fact, TRS just sold over ,00 units in total during its existence in the technology world. The good thing about the year is the wide range of personal computers were made available in the market. Mass-Market, ready-assembled computers were the mainstream during that time since the market was made sure to be available to a diverse group of people.

In , the Heath Company released these series of Personal computers, starting with Heathkit 8, then H89 in late One trait about the Heathkit 8 is you can purchase additional hardware for it, like H memory board that has 4k of RAM in order to run a software. They are also responsible for being one of the companies to release a bit personal computer in , it was known as The Heathkit H Who actually did invent the PC? The best answer is found in Professor Paul E. Cerruzi's excellent study, A History of Modern Computing.

Henry Edward Roberts, designer of the Altair Computer, "deserves credit as the inventor of the personal computer," Cerruzi asserts.

C'mon IBM, have a heart. Even Roberts' Wikipedia page acknowledges him as the engineer who developed "the first commercially successful personal computer. But Cerruzi's book explores another important theme, broadly suggested by his comment. The PC, like almost all crucial innovations, was really invented by a lot of people.

Let's follow the narrative in Cerruzi's chapter on the personal computer to get a sense of how complex that achievement was. When surrounded by its necessary accoutrements, it pretty much sucked all the oxygen out of your typical computer room.

But the PDP was also miles ahead of previous machines in terms of convenience and cost. And thanks to the innovation of time sharing—microsecond multitasking systems that allowed hundreds of programmers to use the same mainframe simultaneously—the PDP created a new user experience. In addition, the computer's TOPS operating system allowed users to do something that we take for granted today—store data blocks in a terminal.

This also gave programmers the "illusion" that they were in personal control of the machine. The small handheld calculating devices of the early s also made personal computing seem more possible. These used ever more sophisticated integrated circuits. From this point onward, calculators got cheaper and more powerful.

The more expensive ones could perform unheard of tasks: logarithms; complex trigonometry. They were also programmable. What I did not realize at the time was that what I was doing with all that initial input was writing a computer program into an interpreter. The code, unfortunately, could not be compiled, and therefore had to be recreated each time I wanted to play.

But someone had gone to the trouble of creating this process on a little hand-held gadget. Calculator users, as much as the more widely celebrated mainframe "hackers" of computer lore, created the market for PCs. There were tens of thousands more calculator users than hackers, Cerruzi observes. It was the creation of a device that integrated all the functions of a computer's central processing unit CPU into a single chip that took these innovations to the next level.

However, as Mr Blankenbaker says, he may have been more successful targeting his sales at the university students and young professionals who would go on to provide Apple's customer base later in the decade, and indeed still do. After the Kenbak-1 experience he worked at International Communication Sciences, at Symbolics, and at Quotron, before retiring in He says he did not make much money out of the Kenbak-1 venture, and that one of his failings was in underestimating the development of high technology.

I always felt that the current technical situation was the most that could be expected. Early Apple computer fails to sell. Man builds giant computer at home. Historic Apple 1 sold at auction. Duo restore famous early computer. Auction Team Breker. Image source, John Blankenbaker. Image source, AuctionTeamBreker.

Pioneer days. Image source, Keystone.