The Secret History of Personal Computers

In some ways, I have been pretty fortunate to be in the right places at the right times when it came to the development of personal computing.

It all started around March of 1974.  At the time, I had been working as an electronic technician (TV/audio repair, sound systems) for about ten years.  My friend Roger Gregory (scroll down to chapter six) showed me a book: Computer Lib/Dream Machines by Ted Nelson.  Knowing Roger as the genius he is--combined with my knowledge that Intel had recently introduced the first primitive microprocessors--I realized that the first personal computers were probably less than 2 years away.

My knowledge of computers of any kind was pretty minimal at the time, but it was exciting--though I didn't really have any way to learn about computers then, as I was pretty minimally employed (a recurring problem I have never fully resolved) and didn't have much of a research budget.  I did read whatever I could lay my hands on, however; when the Altair 8800 computer kit was announced in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine (but not shipped in any quantity until after the second article the following December), I knew, to paraphrase the immortal words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that "the game was afoot."

I will be writing more on this later as a series of articles--including virtually-unknown information on the development of such well-known computers as the IBM PC and the Macintosh, as well as lesser-known computers such as the Amiga and Atari ST (some of the information in this article is not totally accurate)--which I will link to from here.  Some of it will be moderately technical, but I will do my best to not leave useful nuggets in a dry heap.  I intend to give the information a meaningful context so you can have some idea of "how we got here" in personal computing.

I will leave you with one teaser, though: the original Macintosh was never intended to be a computer--and leave it at that, for now.