Who built the first minicomputers?

I'm glad to see another attempt at a taxonomy for early computing machinery, but I tend to agree with other posters that using marketing terms like "minicomputer" are not a useful basis to ground the taxonomy and attach the distinguishing characteristics. DEC marketing struggled with these terms over the years, we even had "superminicomputer" at one point (for VAX I think), and Prime jumped onto that bandwagon too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superminicomputer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minisupercomputer However, the article makes an attempt to establish criteria and place various systems, it becomes a useful straw-man taxonomy to provoke discussion about important or neglected differences and bring to light forgotten systems. To play this game I point to the Burroughs (ElectroData?) E101 machines as a candidate (probably fails on the power part at 3KW, but pin-board programmed!): http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-b.html#BURROUGHS-E-101 http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/early-computer-companies/5/113/488 http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-burroughs-e-101.jpg Perhaps SL's effort will motivate someone to make something better? A rich taxonomy capturing a lot of detail would mean a complete catalogue of early systems could be constructed and we could see the gaps and highlight systems by their influence on the times.