18 Aug
2010
18 Aug
'10
5:58 p.m.
From: Chuck Guzis
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 10:31 AM
On 18 Aug 2010 at 9:25, Al Kossow wrote:
> The earliest use of the term as we use it today
was an ad in
> Datamation announcing the (Varian) Data 520i in April, 1968.
That would, etymologically speaking, put the term more
in the
American "miniskirt" (1966) camp that came over with the Mod
subculture and the Beatles, than the BMC/Morris "Mini (1959) one.
I'd suspected the auto usage was more exclusively British.
The miniskirt was introduced under that name by Mary Quant in 1965.
She explicitly stated that the name was influenced by the Mini.
Could we say that the minicomputer owes its origins to
Carnaby
Street?
By 1968 when the term was apparently used in advertising for the first
time (thanks, Al!), far too many things in American marketing had been
labeled "mini", so yeah, probably so.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.PDPplanet.org/
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/