[cctalk] Re: on the origin of home computers

I got into it from EAM/cards. In 1970, I was working at National Space Sciences Data Center, building 26 at Goddard Space Flight Center. Doing gofer work for a British physicist studying the Van Allen belts, as part of an on-site contract. FORTRAN, APL, Gerber digitizer, and plotters (Calcomp and Stromberg). When I heard about microprocessors, it was obviously inevitable that computers were destined to become small and cheap. I was getting out during a collapse of aerospace, and I opened an auto repair shop for the 1970s. I declared that I would get back into computers when I could afford a table-top computer that could run a high level language, such as FORTRAN. I never said that that would be the first home computer, since I already knew some crazy hobbyists. I merely said that that would be the first one that I would get. About eight years later, I bought a TRS80 for $398. Yes, you could buy it without the video monitor and cassette recorder. If I had a little more spending money, I might have gotten a PET, instead, or, not much later, but more money, an Apple2. Those were absolutely not the first home computer, either. But I consider them TIED with each other as to which was first of that group. (do you count announcement, production, going on sale, or being able to walk into a store and buy one without pre-order?) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com