Corrections to trivia

On Tue, 6 Oct 1998, Sam Ismail wrote: Historical footnotes are always intresting, but it seems to me that to pronounce "the F15 CADC was first, not the Intel 4004" is a strawman. We all agree that society was changed by the cheap interactive "personal" computer. We all know that *all* of the earliest cheap machines were based on Intel CPUs. This wasn't an accident, and nothing would change this fact if, say, TI engineers had actually produced a microprocessor before Intel. The important "firsts" in documenting the personal computer revolution are commercialization, availability, and price. I'm not denying that Holt produced a CPU, and it may be important in the history of military computers. It is irrelevant in the history of the personal computer unless there was a personal computer designed that included it or a direct descendant. The HP9830 is a historical footnote. It's more relevant than a military computer because there is documented evidence of the HP influence on early Apple machines, and the significance of the Apple machines are clear. There is also evidence that suggests that HP thought about and discounted the idea of selling the 9830 to a wider audience. To me, this makes it a pretty interesting footnote. If it had been created in a vacuum and Woz had worked at IBM instead of HP, it would be a lesser footnote, something like the MCM machine you mentioned. I think it's great that Holt got his story out. Footnotes always add depth, but no chapters need to be rewritten. -- Doug