# First commercially available computer for home use **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 8, 2017, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672 "2017-03-08T03:20:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SigMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@SigMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SigMan)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/41 "2017-03-09T03:19:40Z")
We had Parsec and I think that came with the console. We also got these: Writing in Basic was what got me hooked and I soon ran out of memory for my games. That's when I got the C64. I started out writing card games like poker. At first it was just numbers and symbols then learned how to write an array where I don’t repeat a card. Then the graphics. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/42 "2017-03-09T05:17:38Z")
I guess Multivac wouldn’t count. Hell, it couldn’t even answer one simple question. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/43 "2017-03-09T05:46:05Z")
If we are allowed any technology, the CARDIAC would have to be in there. I had one. Still have it in a drawer somewhere. [https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.html](https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.html) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/44 "2017-03-09T11:50:36Z")
Cool. Though I would not want to be the guy hand-emulating that Towers of Hanoi app. 🙂 Reminds me of day 1 or 2 in EE 101 in Ye Olden Dayes. The prof got 2 sets of 8 students to stand up front facing one another. Each student was a single-bit gate who was to hold arms up to indicate 1 or down for 0. Each was given an instruction card to watch one or two of the other group and respond according to a simple AND/OR/NOT rule. Everybody would change states either on the uptick of the clock (instructor announcing “bonk”) or downtick (instructor announcing “bleep”) depending on their instruction card. Collectively they made an 8-bit adder. It was hilarious to watch them add 2 + 3. It also took about 5 tries and 15 minutes to get right. ECC was still in the future I guess. And branch prediction was right out. 😃 Considering the number of “gates” (synapses) involved in this emulation vs. the number in the adder, this may be close to the limit case of higher-powered computers emulating lower-powered ones. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/45 "2017-03-09T15:15:42Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Cool. Though I would not want to be the guy hand-emulating that Towers of Hanoi app. 🙂 > > Reminds me of day 1 or 2 in EE 101 in Ye Olden Dayes. The prof got 2 sets of 8 students to stand up front facing one another. > > Each student was a single-bit gate who was to hold arms up to indicate 1 or down for 0. Each was given an instruction card to watch one or two of the other group and respond according to a simple AND/OR/NOT rule. Everybody would change states either on the uptick of the clock (instructor announcing “bonk”) or downtick (instructor announcing “bleep”) depending on their instruction card. > > Collectively they made an 8-bit adder. It was hilarious to watch them add 2 + 3. It also took about 5 tries and 15 minutes to get right. ECC was still in the future I guess. And branch prediction was right out. 😃 > Considering the number of “gates” (synapses) involved in this emulation vs. the number in the adder, this may be close to the limit case of higher-powered computers emulating lower-powered ones. Great story. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/46 "2017-03-09T15:29:40Z")
Darn it, I wanted to do that in my computer architecture classes. Actually I had planned to divide the class up (there were typically enrolments of about the 200 mark) and make the middle set of students in the lecture theatre the ALU, and get the students on each side to act as other bits. But I left academia before I got a chance. One thing I did get the students to do was to sit around a table and emulate a paging virtual memory system. We ran that in tutorials, and with 8 students, each with a task, and bit of paper to keep state faulted a page of data back from disk. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/47 "2017-03-09T16:46:51Z")
I love old computers and collect them as a hobby. I have an Apple //e, an IBM XT clone, a C64, an Amstrad CPC 464, among others. They’re all great fun and have interesting stories. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/48 "2017-03-09T16:58:55Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I question whether a programmable calculator is truly a computer. Yes, you could numerical computations on one, but could you make a word processor or even an editor? Virtually nobody was doing any sort of word processing on any early computers. Everything was so expensive that having both upper case and lower case alphabets was a luxury eschewed by some, and the surplus teletypes often appropriated for I/O were typically upper case only. Word processing first happened on dedicated hardware, not general purpose computers. It was the 80s before anyone in an office was doing word processing on a desktop computer. Word processing is really something computers enabled, but not really something people had in mind when they made computers. As late as the 70’s nobody outside the news business really thought in terms of moving sentences or paragraphs around, because why would you? If it mattered a lot you did an outline first. Things I have run on programmable calculators: A 301 darts opponent simulator, which I would play against by throwing real darts. Numerous iterative solving programs. Algebraic root finders. Antenna radiation patterns with numeric output manually plotted onto graph paper. Analysis/synthesis of complex optical systems with 10s of surfaces. Eventually I learned to write VBA scripts to run under Excel to do most of this sort of thing and more, but occasionally, dragging the HP out for a simple task is the easiest way. By the way, I highly recommend the HP-41 app for the iPhone. The key action is of course wrong, but otherwise it is a '41. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/49 "2017-03-09T17:08:47Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Considering the number of “gates” (synapses) involved in this emulation vs. the number in the adder, this may be close to the limit case of higher-powered computers emulating lower-powered ones. Ever read _The Three Body Problem_? [In one plot element](http://gizmodo.com/if-you-love-computers-this-novel-should-be-next-on-you-1686656889): \* At one point, Yang helps the civilization in the game invent a computer — which they create entirely with human labor. Using hundreds of thousands of soldiers who act as bits (they hold a flag up or down to indicate 1 or 0), they create logic gates, a CPU, a bus (people racing on horses between different parts of the human motherboard), and more. When the bits “malfunction,” they are killed by their king.\* ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/50 "2017-03-09T17:15:39Z")
The first computer I used at a job was a PDP-11 with, I think, 32K of memory and a 500 KB disk. It was definitely a computer, but there’s no way in hell it could have run anything you would call a word processor. It did have an editor, TECO, which is of course the greatest text editor ever written. Kids today, with their fancy “word processors”… ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/51 "2017-03-09T17:31:03Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > If we are allowed any technology, the CARDIAC would have to be in there. I had one. Still have it in a drawer somewhere. > > [https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.html](https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.html) While we had (slooow) dial-up access to a 360 system and programmed in a PL/I variant, the CARDIACs we were given were incredibly educational about what on inside computers. It was amazing what you could do with such a primitive “computer”. Programmed Bubble Sort on it. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2017, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/52 "2017-03-09T17:40:00Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > People LOVED those old HP calculators. They were not just objects. I still have an affection for them. The physical quality was also something you don’t get today. It felt solid in your hand, and the ‘tipping’ keys were a pleasure to press. I don’t know why they can’t make them like that today. All the calculator thought has made me think of the (school-owned) calculator I was assigned in a math class in college. Some googling shows that it was an [HP-28S](http://mycalcdb.free.fr/main.php?l=0&id=835) (and now I’m wishing had one today.) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2017, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/53 "2017-03-10T00:53:15Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > Darn it, I wanted to do that in my computer architecture classes. Actually I had planned to divide the class up (there were typically enrolments of about the 200 mark) and make the middle set of students in the lecture theatre the ALU, and get the students on each side to act as other bits. But I left academia before I got a chance. > > One thing I did get the students to do was to sit around a table and emulate a paging virtual memory system. We ran that in tutorials, and with 8 students, each with a task, and bit of paper to keep state faulted a page of data back from disk. Cool. Woulda been fun. There’s more value in concretizing some of these foundational ideas than many folks seem to recognize. A week after that bonk/bleep demo we built the same circuit in lab using 74xx TTL bugs. \*State of the art \*74xx TTL bugs. It’s not like that today I hear. 🙂 > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Ever read _The Three Body Problem_? [In one plot element](http://gizmodo.com/if-you-love-computers-this-novel-should-be-next-on-you-1686656889): > \* > At one point, Yang helps the civilization in the game invent a computer — which they create entirely with human labor. Using hundreds of thousands of soldiers who act as bits (they hold a flag up or down to indicate 1 or 0), they create logic gates, a CPU, a bus (people racing on horses between different parts of the human motherboard), and more. When the bits “malfunction,” they are killed by their king.\* Hadn’t read that. Thanks. Lends a certain pathos to the old saying “bits are cheap.” ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2017, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/54 "2017-03-10T04:48:31Z")
> [@Kevbo](#): > > Word processing is really something computers enabled, but not really something people had in mind when they made computers. As late as the 70’s nobody outside the news business really thought in terms of moving sentences or paragraphs around, because why would you? If it mattered a lot you did an outline first. . Word processing was absolutiely something people had in mind: the Wang 1200 (1972) and the IBM Electromatic Table Printing Machine (1946) didn’t invent the market: they filled a (high priced) need. The 4 original targetws for computer use were Calculation (“programming” was a specific kind of calculation that gave it’s name to the activity) Process control. Database Word Processing. ---
**Author:** ![crucible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@crucible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crucible)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2017, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/55 "2017-03-10T16:56:45Z")
> [@txjim](#): > > Slight Hijack: a great way to revisit the old days is to read through the early days of Byte magazine when the hobbyist and techie was still the target audience. > > [Byte Magazine at Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine?&sort=date) > > And, yes, I was probably carrying an early issue while sorting through my card deck of PL/I programs. Many happy hours copying programs for my AppleII. Right now, I can’t remember what any of them did. Man, have things changed over the years. So much less expensive, relatively, to have the world at your fingertips. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2017, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/56 "2017-03-10T17:07:11Z")
Somewhere in my boxes of crap, I have a copy of the plans for a 8008 computer with 256 bytes of RAM. I believe it preceded the Altair (8080) by about 6 months -1974? The Systems Analyst where I worked ordered the plans when they came out, and then left them behind when he quit. I think the Commodore PET (1977), TRS80 and Apple ][ all came out about the same time, 1977 or 1978; the Commodore PET was probably more popular in Canada than the USA. I tossed mine in the early 90’s when I realized it was not writing one bit in RAM - write a program, list it, and the same character was an error every time. The RAM chips were failing after 20 years. And on eBay - they were going for $5. I have my dad’s hand-cranked Curta calculator from 1957 - 12 digits of accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/57 "2017-03-11T02:21:44Z")
> [@crucible](#): > > So much less expensive, relatively, to have the world at your fingertips. People underestimate this. The original base Apple II sold for $1,298 in 1977, or somewhat over $5,000 today. If you wanted the full amount of RAM, that price went up to $2,638 in 1977 dollars. And that computer came with just the basics. It had no built-in networking, not that anything other than dial-up BBSes were available to most home users at the time. Or would be, in January 1978, when Ward Christiansen and Randy Suess invented BBSes in Chicago. These days, you can get a computer for a fifth the price with orders of magnitude more actual usefulness, both in terms of the capabilities of the machine itself and in terms of the amount of information and entertainment you can access using it. A computer with the specs of an Apple II would be a joke if it were released as a cell phone today. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/58 "2017-03-11T03:05:57Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > Honeywell Kitchen Computer (aka 316) > > [Honeywell 316 - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316) [Had to be wishful thinking on someones part](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Kitchen_computer_ad.jpg) $10,000 in 1969? you could buy a family a house. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/59 "2017-03-11T03:37:34Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Somewhere in my boxes of crap, I have a copy of the plans for a 8008 computer with 256 bytes of RAM. I believe it preceded the Altair (8080) by about 6 months -1974? The Systems Analyst where I worked ordered the plans when they came out, and then left them behind when he quit. > > I think the Commodore PET (1977), TRS80 and Apple ][ all came out about the same time, 1977 or 1978; the Commodore PET was probably more popular in Canada than the USA. I tossed mine in the early 90’s when I realized it was not writing one bit in RAM - write a program, list it, and the same character was an error every time. The RAM chips were failing after 20 years. And on eBay - they were going for $5. > > I have my dad’s hand-cranked Curta calculator from 1957 - 12 digits of accuracy. Plans published in Radio Electronics IIRC. The 8008 was not as flexible as the Altair’s 8080 which went on to dominate the market ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2017, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672/60 "2017-03-11T05:24:43Z")
I believe MITS preceded Altair. The Sinclair 1000 was the most fun. Crane [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-commercially-available-computer-for-home-use/781672.md?page=4)