View Full Version : In 50 Years, Who Will They Say Invented The Personal Computer...
Edison invented the first is credited with the first successful incandescent light bulb which he patented 1879 but 22 other inventors had working designs going back 30 years prior.
Alexander Bell is credited with the invention of the telephone and more importantly hold the first patent, but there are a half a dozen or more who claim to have developed it first.
1974 saw the introduction of what most consider the first true personal computer, the Altair 8800 from Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems created by Ed Roberts and Forrest Mims which used the programing language Altair BASIC developed by Microsoft as their first project which was created by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
But seems history wants to give credit to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak for the Apple I from 1975 and recognize the Commodore PET as the first commercially successful PC which was introduced in Jan. 1977.
Jobs and Woz are mostly household names and everyone has heard of the Apple even if only about 200 Apple I computers were ever produced.
Al Gore
We will be too busy being dead from climate change to care...
I have no idea if they are valuable now, but we have several old computers in storage. My dad was a tech geek from way back. He started with Fortran with IBM in the late 60's. He didn't like working for IBM and moved on to new things. When computers became available to the general public we got a Commodore PET in 1978, moved to the Vic-20, then the 64. We also had some sort of Atari, a Osbourne and a Kaypro (that I still have). He wrote basic inventory management programs with these machines for our hardware business. In the late 80's our little store was in on the ground floor of point of sale software, far ahead of other retailers in Alaska. I don't know how many thousands of dollars my dad spent on this stuff. Oddly enough, he tired of the advancements somewhere around Windows 95 and hasn't bought a computer since. He just started texting earlier this year...LOL...
I have no idea if they are valuable now, but we have several old computers in storage. My dad was a tech geek from way back. He started with Fortran with IBM in the late 60's. He didn't like working for IBM and moved on to new things. When computers became available to the general public we got a Commodore PET in 1978, moved to the Vic-20, then the 64. We also had some sort of Atari, a Osbourne and a Kaypro (that I still have). He wrote basic inventory management programs with these machines for our hardware business. In the late 80's our little store was in on the ground floor of point of sale software, far ahead of other retailers in Alaska. I don't know how many thousands of dollars my dad spent on this stuff. Oddly enough, he tired of the advancements somewhere around Windows 95 and hasn't bought a computer since. He just started texting earlier this year...LOL...
It's amazing to me what computers cost by the late 80s, four to five grand for a machine with less capability than most $100 phones today. I remember buying a Apple II plus, monitor and epson dot matrix printer setup in 1981 and I think it was liked $1,200 or something like that. But my dad thought I needed it for school and to be computer literate.
By 1983 I was pretty high speed and doing stuff adults couldn't understand, that was when you still wrote your own programs for everything. Then data was transferred from disc to drive and you bought programs rather than had the ability to write your own. That's when I got bored and let it all go. When windows came out I thought it was a joke.
If not for the development of a content filled web, I would have never bought another one. Now it's a communication device and reference more than anything. I haven't used a computer the way a computer was originally intended since about 1987.
Moose-Knuckle
03-19-17, 04:04
In 50 Years, Who Will They Say Invented The Personal Computer...
Barry Soetoro
I guess it all depends on who is in power in 50 years. I was taught that the light bulb was invented by Vladinir Illych Lenin not Edison. Papov invented the radio not Marconi and so on.
It's kind of like the first car, what's your definition?
- technically meets the definition, but a modern user would not recognize it. Engine on a horse wagon. Altair.
- would be recognized as a car by a current user- Daimler? Apple 1, HP desktop, etc. Keyboard, monitor, operating system/language, could be used to do things.
- first commercially viable- model T, Commedore Pet, Apple II, etc
The Altair was just the first hobbiest oriented device to use the newly developed Intel CPUs. No keyboard, no monitor, no paper tape, just buttons and lights.
It was probably the first micro computer. But most would not consider it the first PC.
One thing for sure, it was not Jobs. And even Woz just copied the HP 9800 desktops he was working with. His breakthrough was to use a cheap chip (6502) and have it self generate video, keyboard, and disk functions rather than use external devices.
It was a cost reduction & packaging play, not a functionality play.
The Pet and Apple ii were released about the same time, and Commedore largely copied the Apple ii prototype they saw.
I would give Apple the model T equiv. But they did not invent the tech. Just packaged and sold it well, at a reasonable price point, just as Henry Ford did.
You'll find a common theme with most Apple breakthrough products. Rarely the first. Rarely the best (technical, reliability, features). But usually well packaged and marketed. And with a focus on user design perceptions that competitors lacked.
sevenhelmet
03-19-17, 09:34
I guess it all depends on who is in power in 50 years. I was taught that the light bulb was invented by Vladinir Illych Lenin not Edison. Papov invented the radio not Marconi and so on.
So... Al Gore?
Papov invented the radio not Marconi and so on..
You have that wrong. It was Don Ameche.
;)
I will hopefully be dead by then.
If not I will spread lies that it was a bunch of drunken college girls looking for an easier way to shop on line.
I'll be old so anything I say will be dismissed as dementia or taken as Gospel from Moses.
Flip a coin
So... Al Gore?
I thought he invented the Internet and Global Warming? I'm sure they can find another leftists to attribute the PC to. Maybe Bill Clinton?
"Born out of the necessity to find some strange Bill worked hard in his Arkansas garage to build a machine he can use to talk to women other than Hillary without her knowing. Together with his best friend Al Gore, who invented the Internet, Bill revolutionized the world of porn!"
Outlander Systems
03-19-17, 10:47
What if the A.I. came back in time, and invented itself...
Actually in all seriousness, Charles Babbage invented the first computer. Maybe not as we know it but it was a computer.
Sadly, I attribute this knowledge to the old Babbage's stores they used to have where they sold video games and computer stuff. Everyone had to wear shirts and ties, women had to wear dresses. It was a classy place to buy a Super Nintendo game. It had this minimalist aesthetic like it was the sharper image all to buy nintendo crap.
Now they got gamestop....and now I buy all my crap online.
Outlander Systems
03-19-17, 11:03
Bro, I used to LOVE Babbage's, Software Etc., and Electronics Boutique.
The closest thing there is today for that "vibe" is Fry's.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/71/14/ab/7114abce55153280d78c20911ca3c428.jpg
GameSlop, Worst Buy, etc. Don't even come close.
IKR. Having some guy in a suit or some lady in business attire sell me a Nintendo game lent gravitas to my purchase. Like I wasn't pissing away my youth.
I have withdrawn inward because why should I give patronage to people who act like they are doing me a favor while I buy something from them?
Anyways, per Apple IIs....every school had one in the library and you got to play Oregon Trail IF you were good.
Or that one fish game about nature where that bird would snatch you up.
I just liked Oregon Trail because you got to shoot stuff. I never made it to Oregon. Oregon sucks anyways.
Outlander Systems
03-19-17, 11:16
Do you even Dysentery, bro?
The personal computer was "invented" by Jobs, Wozniak, and Bill Gates. None of them invented the hardware...they had the vision to buck conventional thinking and envision that not only was it feasible and desireable to have a stand-alone computer on the desktop but it could be a huge money-maker as well. Prior to those guys, tech thinking was dominated by:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
and
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
If we're talking about popularizing the personal computer, and applying existing technology to make the personal computer useful, that's gotta be Steve Jobs. Almost every single technolgy application that advanced the usefulness of personal computers came out of Apple.
Al Gore
That's a common mis-understanding. Al Gore invented the Internet. Kayne West invented the Computer but exploited the Internet. So many get them confused thinking it's the other way round.
Al Gore = Internet
Kayne West = Computer
Barack Obama = Rhythm & Blues
Cate Blanchett = Birth of Navigation
It's a bit amazing we've made it this far.
The personal computer was "invented" by Jobs, Wozniak, and Bill Gates. None of them invented the hardware...they had the vision to buck conventional thinking and envision that not only was it feasible and desireable to have a stand-alone computer on the desktop but it could be a huge money-maker as well. Prior to those guys, tech thinking was dominated by:
That may be but around 1984 I was setting up IBM PCs and XTs out of a warehouse as fast as we could get them in and out the door. The singular Apples were being pushed off the desk into a closet or trash to be replaced by multiple IBMs.
I learned basic in the late 70's off of my brothers TRS 80. The cassette deck download and all. I got an A in poli sci in college just because the professor was so impressed that I was turning in my work from a dot matrix printer.
FlyingHunter
03-19-17, 12:00
Skynet...self creation
That may be but around 1984 I was setting up IBM PCs and XTs out of a warehouse as fast as we could get them in and out the door. The singular Apples were being pushed off the desk into a closet or trash to be replaced by multiple IBMs.
No question that Gates did a fantastic marketing job, selling a lame and notoriously unreliable operating system and establishing really impressive market dominance.
But I'm talking about the vision to apply existing technolgy to advance the desktop computer. GUI, desktop publishing, video editing, optical storage, wifi, etc...all the stuff that Apple pioneered and the rest of the industry copied.
Outlander Systems
03-19-17, 12:23
Slightly OT...
...does anyone know where I can get an IBM 5100?
There are two parts to this really. Who invented it and who brought it to the masses. Both are important.
Did Steve Jobs invent the Computer? Of course not. But he, along with a few other visionaries brought them to the masses with easier to use interfaces and affordable hardware.
Kind of like the iphone wasn't the first smart phone but it was the one that started the consumer smartphone revolution.
Model T is another great example.
Moving outside inventions look at Christopher Columbus. He "discovered" a land that already had a number of thriving cultures and had been "discovered" hundreds of years before by the Norse. But we give him the credit because It kicked off what became a huge wave of conquest and immigration to the Americas.
I guess it all depends on who is in power in 50 years. I was taught that the light bulb was invented by Vladinir Illych Lenin not Edison. Papov invented the radio not Marconi and so on.
Actually, Marconi is wrongly credited with inventing radio, Nikola Tesla was first. This went all the way to the US Supreme Court back in the early 40s. Tesla won, but textbooks still credit Marconi.
MountainRaven
03-20-17, 01:44
Actually, Marconi is wrongly credited with inventing radio, Nikola Tesla was first. This went all the way to the US Supreme Court back in the early 40s. Tesla won, but textbooks still credit Marconi.
Yup. Probably for the same reason we have a Columbus Day instead of, say, a Sir Walter Raleigh Day (who actually reached what would become the US) or a Leif Erikson Day (who beat Columbus by about 500 years): The Italian-American lobby. The Serbian-American lobby simply doesn't have the pull.
Yup. Probably for the same reason we have a Columbus Day instead of, say, a Sir Walter Raleigh Day (who actually reached what would become the US) or a Leif Erikson Day (who beat Columbus by about 500 years): The Italian-American lobby. The Serbian-American lobby simply doesn't have the pull.
Don't forget the Chinese fleet finding us all the way back in 1421. Well I guess they found what would one day be us.
Moose-Knuckle
03-20-17, 03:09
Papov invented the radio not Marconi and so on.
Marconi died in 1937. Tesla died in 1943 and six months after his death the US Supreme Court ruled that all of Marconi's radio patents were invalid and awarded the patents for radio to Tesla.
ETA: Posted before seeing Bubba FAL's post.
MountainRaven
03-20-17, 13:28
Don't forget the Chinese fleet finding us all the way back in 1421. Well I guess they found what would one day be us.
And the Pope was receiving messages of distress from the colonies in Greenland as late as the 1390s, if I recall correctly. Colonies which were closer, as the whale swims, to mainland North America than to Iceland, with whom they regularly traded (by regularly, I mean once or twice a year, a ship would go from Iceland to Greenland and back).
(And a quick read on wikipedia shows the last recorded Catholic/Norse-Greenlander wedding occurred in 1408, that a Danish cartographer appears to have been mapping Greenland around 1420, and Pope Nicholas V wrote the bishops of Iceland reminding them to make sure the Greenlanders had priests and a bishop in 1448. And most Norse/Scandinavian records concerning Greenland were moved from Trondheim (NO) to Copenhagen (DK) in 1664 and were lost, probably destroyed by a fire in 1728.)
The subject of China's Great Fleet reaching the Americas once came up in one of my Asian history classes in college. The professor found the theory's proponent's evidence to be unconvincing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In any case, the Siberians beat the Italian, the Icelander, and the Chinese by about 10,000 years.
And then there was Armstrong, who invented and improved just about everything we know and use about radio.
[URL]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong/URL]
Invented: higher performing tubes, regenerative receivers, superhet receivers, FM radio, etc
Patent disputes dominated his life.
Consensus is that patent corruption by big business at the time cheated him out of many patents.
platoonDaddy
03-20-17, 19:36
Actually the oldest computer can be traced back to Adam and Eve.
It was an Apple.
But with extremely limited memory.
Just 1 byte.
Then everything crashed.
Thank god, they didn't have a DELETE key.
Actually the oldest computer can be traced back to Adam and Eve.
It was an Apple.
But with extremely limited memory.
Just 1 byte.
Then everything crashed.
Thank god, they didn't have a DELETE key.
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/000/681/what-you-did-there-i-see-it.thumbnail.jpg
I'm a little too young for the invention of the personal computer, but I can't help but laugh looking back at things like having some of the earlier MAC computers in grade school or going with my parents to the Gateway store in the big city and trying to buy our first desktop PC.
things to consider:
Who was the first inventor?
Who brought the first commercially unit available?
Who gave us what we recognize today?
People will generally credit the person who came up with the user friendly, advanced model of any particular invention.
People give credit to Albert Einstein for the atomic bomb, but in fact it was Dr. Robert Oppenheimer who was the head of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project.
Bill Gates didn't invent shit, he created Windows which was a copy of CP/M operating system after purchasing QDOS in 1980 for $50k from a guy named Tim Patterson from Digital Research Inc. If a guy named Gary Kildall had not chose blow off IBM, there would be no Bill Gates, the richest man in the world would be Tim Patterson.
Steve Jobs was revolutionary but nothing special. He made computers easy to use and made them affordable. His first product was a success, for like a year. His next few products were bombs. He was fired, and when he returned to Apple, he helped develop the iPod. In Actuality, a guy named Jeff Hawking, who invented to Palm Pilot 20 years before, allowed most of his patents to expire. Patents that allowed Apple to create which in now known as the iphone - its like Chik fi la, they are known for there chicken sandwich, which they claim to have invented but in reality, bread has been a staple since to monolithic age and chickens have been domesticated since before Christ yet Chik Fi la put the two together along with 2 pickles and take credit for an invention.
things to consider:
Who was the first inventor?
Who brought the first commercially unit available?
Who gave us what we recognize today?
People will generally credit the person who came up with the user friendly, advanced model of any particular invention.
People give credit to Albert Einstein for the atomic bomb, but in fact it was Dr. Robert Oppenheimer who was the head of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project.
Bill Gates didn't invent shit, he created Windows which was a copy of CP/M operating system after purchasing QDOS in 1980 for $50k from a guy named Tim Patterson from Digital Research Inc. If a guy named Gary Kildall had not chose blow off IBM, there would be no Bill Gates, the richest man in the world would be Tim Patterson.
Steve Jobs was revolutionary but nothing special. He made computers easy to use and made them affordable. His first product was a success, for like a year. His next few products were bombs. He was fired, and when he returned to Apple, he helped develop the iPod. In Actuality, a guy named Jeff Hawking, who invented to Palm Pilot 20 years before, allowed most of his patents to expire. Patents that allowed Apple to create which in now known as the iphone - its like Chik fi la, they are known for there chicken sandwich, which they claim to have invented but in reality, bread has been a staple since to monolithic age and chickens have been domesticated since before Christ yet Chik Fi la put the two together along with 2 pickles and take credit for an invention.
Yeah...Bill Gates was nothing special. All he did was take that $50 operating system and used it to become, literally, the richest man in the world. And Jobs...? Likewise, no big deal. He just stumbled into creating, then re-creating the most valuable corporation in the world.
How does one become "revolutionary" but "nothing special"?
Yeah...Bill Gates was nothing special. All he did was take that $50 operating system and used it to become, literally, the richest man in the world. And Jobs...? Likewise, no big deal. He just stumbled into creating, then re-creating the most valuable corporation in the world.
How does one become "revolutionary" but "nothing special"?
Widows did not make Bill Gates the richest man, Bill Gates became the richest man in the world when Microsoft went public and then started a long legal war against every software company in the US forcing most small software companies at the time to sell for pennies on the dollar. Apple is the most valuable company in the world, but that is relative. Today Apple still holds a relatively small market share in consumer electronics. Apple is a niche market but priced considerable higher than leading competitors. Tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Adobe and many others are extremely territorial and protective of their products that are made by people in Pakistan, India and China. Software engineers, program developers, hardware dynamic engineers, software mechanics and architects use to make high 6 figure salaries but that was before most 13 year olds in India could do the same thing in there spare time. Now these companies devote there time to protecting there patents. Steve Jobs was a 2 hit wonder, his first hit was the Macintosh, his second was the ipod/iphone. Bill Gates single greatest album hit was Windows 95/98.
Or that one fish game about nature where that bird would snatch you up.
I just liked Oregon Trail because you got to shoot stuff. I never made it to Oregon. Oregon sucks anyways.
I loved that fish game...Odell Lake, I think. That ****ing Osprey ate my ass every time though.
I also never made it to Oregon.
MountainRaven
03-24-17, 21:01
I just liked Oregon Trail because you got to shoot stuff. I never made it to Oregon. Oregon sucks anyways.
I made it to Oregon once, comfortably. And then lost half my stuff in the river rafting mini-game at the end. That was bullshit.
turnburglar
03-25-17, 01:47
I think in 50 years they are gonna look back and give Steve Jobs the credit for the first PC, and here's why: it's not gonna be the Apple I that they are about. It's the iPhone. The mass commercialization and dominant iOS of the touch screen device is gonna be it until we get cerebral implants.
I just liked Oregon Trail because you got to shoot stuff. I never made it to Oregon. Oregon sucks anyways.
I made it to Oregon once, comfortably. And then lost half my stuff in the river rafting mini-game at the end. That was bullshit.
You a**holes, you made me find our finely preserved, presentation boxed Oregon Trail 3rd Edition and load it onto the 'puter. I was surprised it worked.
I think in 50 years they are gonna look back and give Steve Jobs the credit for the first PC, and here's why: it's not gonna be the Apple I that they are about. It's the iPhone. The mass commercialization and dominant iOS of the touch screen device is gonna be it until we get cerebral implants.
I think it will be Steve Jobs, not because he invented it but because he made it useable and reliable.
IMO, kits do not count as PCs.
So I will go with Apple II was first PC, and TRS-80 Model 1 as first mass market successful PC. I may be biased though as I had both. Sadly I no longer have them. The oldest PC I have is my Radio Shack Model 4.
Moose-Knuckle
03-26-17, 05:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9ZQVlgfEAc
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