[PDF] The Home Computer Revolution eBook

Author : Roy A. Allan
Publisher : Allan Publishing
Page : 528 pages
File Size : 21,19 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9780968910801

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This book is an exciting history of the personal computer revolution. Early personal computing, the "first" personal computer, invention of the micrprocessor at Intel and the first microcomputer are detailed. It also traces the evolution of the personal computer from the software hacker, to its use as a consumer appliance on the Internet. This is the only book that provides such comprehensive coverage. It not only describes the hardware and software, but also the companies and people who made it happen.

Author : Lamont Wood
Publisher : Hugo House Publishers, Ltd.
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 23,69 MB
Release : 2013-09-17
Category : Computers
ISBN : 1936449366

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Forget Apple and IBM. For that matter forget Silicon Valley. The first personal computer, a self-contained unit with its own programmable processor, display, keyboard, internal memory, telephone interface, and mass storage of data was born in San Antonio TX. US Patent number 224,415 was filed November 27, 1970 for a machine that is the direct lineal ancestor to the PC as we know it today. The story begins in 1968, when two Texans, Phil Ray and Gus Roche, founded a firm called Computer Terminal Corporation. As the name implies their first product was a Datapoint 3300 computer terminal replacement for a mechanical Teletype. However, they knew all the while that the 3300 was only a way to get started, and it was cover for what their real intentions were - to create a programmable mass-produced desktop computer. They brought in Jack Frassanito, Vic Poor, Jonathan Schmidt, Harry Pyle and a team of designers, engineers and programmers to create the Datapoint 2200. In an attempt to reduce the size and power requirement of the computer it became apparent that the 2200 processor could be printed on a silicon chip. Datapoint approached Intel who rejected the concept as a "dumb idea" but were willing to try for a development contract. Intel belatedly came back with their chip but by then the Datapoint 2200 was already in production. Intel added the chip to its catalog designating it the 8008. A later upgrade, the 8080 formed the heart of the Altair and IMSI in the mid-seventies. With further development it was used in the first IBM PC-the PC revolution's chip dynasty. If you're using a PC, you're using a modernized Datapoint 2000.

Author : Steven Levy
Publisher : "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 19,87 MB
Release : 2010-05-19
Category : Computers
ISBN : 1449393748

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This 25th anniversary edition of Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers -- those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers. Levy profiles the imaginative brainiacs who found clever and unorthodox solutions to computer engineering problems. They had a shared sense of values, known as "the hacker ethic," that still thrives today. Hackers captures a seminal period in recent history when underground activities blazed a trail for today's digital world, from MIT students finagling access to clunky computer-card machines to the DIY culture that spawned the Altair and the Apple II.

Author : Tim Danton
Publisher : Raspberry Pi Press
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 14,51 MB
Release : 2021-05-28
Category : Computers
ISBN : 1912047470

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The home computer boom of the 1980s brought with it now-iconic machines such as the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, and Commodore 64. Those machines would inspire a generation and foster the creation of a booming British software industry that continues to this day. With the help of hefty government discounts, computers worked their way into primary and secondary schools around the country. Millions more computers appeared in living rooms and bedrooms around the country. For once, Britain was ahead of the world, helping to create a golden generation of British programmers. The Computers That Made Britain tells the story of 19 of those computers, and what happened behind the scenes. This book is as much a story about each computer's creation as it is about the people that created them. Through dozens of interviews with the people who were there, discover the tales of missed deadlines, technical faults, business interference, and the unheralded geniuses who brought to the UK everything from the Dragon 32 and ZX81, to the Amstrad CPC 464 and Commodore Amiga. This book closes with the story of the Acorn Archimedes, which introduced the revolutionary ARM processor that powers smart watches, laptops, routers, mobile phones, and the Raspberry Pi to this day.

Author : Alex Wiltshire
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 27,61 MB
Release : 2020-05-19
Category : Computers
ISBN : 0262044013

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A celebration of the early years of the digital revolution, when computing power was deployed in a beige box on your desk. Today, people carry powerful computers in our pockets and call them “phones.” A generation ago, people were amazed that the processing power of a mainframe computer could be contained in a beige box on a desk. This book is a celebration of those early home computers, with specially commissioned new photographs of 100 vintage computers and a generous selection of print advertising, product packaging, and instruction manuals. Readers can recapture the glory days of fondly remembered (or happily forgotten) machines including the Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple Lisa, and Mattel Aquarius—traces of the techno-utopianism of the not-so-distant past. Home Computers showcases mass-market success stories, rarities, prototypes, one-offs, and never-before-seen specimens. The heart of the book is a series of artful photographs that capture idiosyncratic details of switches and plugs, early user-interface designs, logos, and labels. After a general scene-setting retrospective, the book proceeds computer by computer, with images of each device accompanied by a short history of the machine, its inventors, its innovations, and its influence. Readers who inhabit today's always-on, networked, inescapably connected world will be charmed by this visit to an era when the digital revolution could be powered down every evening.

Author : Theresa Welsh, David Welsh
Publisher : The Seeker Books
Page : 624 pages
File Size : 33,58 MB
Release : 2007-03-15
Category :
ISBN : 0979346819

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The authors were part of a community of small software entrepreneurs who created the first applications for personal computers, as the computer revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s changed the way we create and store documents and data. They personally knew many of the principle players whose accomplishments are the stuff of legends, and whose work and vision led the way to our computer-saturated society. This book captures this unique era, through the stories of eye-witnesses, when personal computing was just an idea -- an idea whose time had come! In these pages you will learn how a young engineer named Steve Leininger, working alone, built the first TRS-80 microcomputer . He had been hired by Tandy Corporation to develop a computer product to be sold in their Radio Shack stores for a price their customers could afford. Development costs were less than $150,000. Yet no one had ever sold a complete off-the-shelf personal computer before. Would anyone buy it? As it turned out, the desire for a computer of one's own was overwhelming! Author David Welsh was one of the hobbyists-turned-programmers who bought a TRS-80. Using self-taught programming skills, he created a word processor and he and his wife Theresa found themselves in business, selling their product worldwide to enthusiastic fans who were eager to throw away their typewriters. They were part of the leading edge of the software business, joining hundreds of other small entrepreneurs selling software out of garages, basements and whatever space they could rent cheap. David and Theresa Welsh tell their own story and that of many other pioneers. Includes over 100 illustrations of early computer products and ads.

Author : Edward Yourdon
Publisher :
Page : 632 pages
File Size : 36,77 MB
Release : 1986
Category : Computers
ISBN :

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The purpose of this book is to survey the impact of the computer revolution in broad terms, and to see--in more direct detailed terms than has been done before--how this revolution puts our nation at greater and greater risk each day. Today's computer technology, coupled with the frenetic pace of technological development, has put the United States in a race for economic survival with a dozen other countries around the world.