Firsts

On Sun, 11 Jan 1998, Francois Auradon wrote: > Here's a questionthat is probably going to generate some passionate

No debates necessary on some of these as there were definite firsts. For instance: "Computer Space" which was Atari's first video game. I think someone may correct me and tell me it wasn't "Atari" yet, but it was created by Nolan Bushnell. The Odyssey. Came out in 1972. It used wafer carthridges for games that weren't actually ROMs but actually just "patches" to re-configure the console to throw different sprites onto the screen. This is harder to define. The question really is, who's definition of "personal" are we referring to? Everyone's got their own. Some people consider certain mainframes to have been "personal computers" because you could actually sit down at the main console and have the computer all to yourself. If the definition of "personal" is "integrated CPU, keyboard and video output" then that would be the Sol-20 from 1976. This was first proposed at the First Annual Vintage Computer Festival, and once you've done your own research you will tend to agree. Some will argue that the Apple ][ was the first (by this definition). But the Sol-20 beat it by a few months.