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by II2II
11 days ago
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> yes there were folks from before that saw a PDP or whatever but they were rare, and usually either deep in academia or IBM etc. Was it a case of being rare, or of computers being something they used at work (and only work) so they simply didn't talk about computers outside of that context? Judging from stories of the early days of personal computers, those people mostly fell into two camps: those who were excited about getting their hands on a computer of their own, and those who dismissed personal computers as useless toys. The latter would make the number of people exposed to computers seem artificially small. I bring this up because I have encountered people who used minis and mainframes over the years. They were a fixture in major corporations and even medium sized businesses by the late 1970's (which is when personal computers started getting the attention of the public). |
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There were around 650 000 PDP machines produced. By contrast Commodore 64 made over 12.5 million. VIC 20 another 1.5. Zx Spectrum about 5 mil. Similar for the Apple 2. IBM pc made 7.5 million by 1987. BBC Micro another couple million.
And of course yes, these were the first "home" pcs. So as I said, before this time the machines were locked away and only used for "real work". PCs were "everywhere". We had a computer club (with 2, count them 2 machines).
Of course, compared to now they were rare. But my generation entered the work-force and spent the 90s "computerising" businesses. Not the giant corporates but the millions of regular businesses. I wrote software but it was common to have to supply hardware to go with the software.
It certainly was fun being around as an entire industry was birthed. It was very dynamic, things moved quickly, and there was a lot of "keeping up".
We saw it again with web, and then mobile, but they were less exciting in many respects.