Special K

Old Computers: The History of the PC

I'm naive. I've always thought that computers were a relatively new thing. I never saw any in old movies, so I thought they must not have existed. I was definitly wrong however. Instead, computers have been around for decades, although in a different form than we are used to today.

My classmate, LeCrisha, blogged extensively on the history of the personal computer. She included several links that provided useful information for tracking the computer's history.

One link that I found interesting was Jerz's Literacy Weblog, which lists the years that important computer landmarks occured. In class, we were given a list of these landmarks and were told to write down the years that we thought they occured. I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one that was in the dark about the computer's history!

The one item on the list that really intregued me was the year IBM was founded. Instead of the 80s, it actually began in 1911. Of course, these first computers were not small enough to fit on a desktop. Instead, they took up enture rooms, calculating information that would be done almost immediatly by today's machines.

The personal home computer didn't arrive until much later, in 1975. The computer was the IBM 5100, and while it wasn't the first personal computer, it was one to be convienient enough for home use. By convienient I mean that it only weighed 50 pounds.

The history of the computer is extremely extensive. There are several websites and books, such as Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger, Michael Swaine and Nerds 2.0.1 by Stephen Segaller, that provide a much more indepth look at one of our favorite inventions.