First Internet message and ...

On Tue, 26 Nov 2019, Richard Pope wrote: Well, it has all the makings of a great holy war, although not as fascinating as vi V emacs. After most of the Cat people were killed in the holy war over RED V BLUE hats, Cloister The Stupid (Lister) revealed that he had intended the hats to be GREEN. I consider Commodore PET, TRS80, and Apple to be an exact TIE! (along with a whole bunch of tiny guys who nobody remembers). Did it really matter whether Alexander Graham Bell or Elisha Gray filed the patent earliest in that day? (There were a few other issues, such as Bell's people manipulating patent examiner) When we look at which computer was first, are we looking at First successful prototype First instance of a finished machine First announced First advertised First demo'd First shown at a significant trade show First manufactured First one sold or available for sale First one that did not require pre-order First one shipped First one that could be bought off the shelf None of the three were first on ALL of those, so it becomes which are most important, or chosen to be the DEFINITION of "FIRST" For me, TRS80 was the first one that I was able to purchase and carry home, but the other two were not significantly behind, if I were to have been less impatient and research my choice. Both of the other two were "on the market", but I couldn't get my hands on either for at least another month. I preferred the Apple hardware expandability, but I couldn't get one until later, and for more money. At the time, I could have purchased an S100 computer, or a few others, (PET/TRS80/Apple were far from being the first!) but I could buy the TRS80 for $400 plus tax ($600 with monitor and casette, but I used my own). I had a few B&W composite input monitors from Sony CV and AV videotape, and just had to make a cable from 5 pin DIN to UHF connector. Nothing else was available that had a high level language for less than $1000. BASIC was close enough to FORTRAN to satisfy my original "requirement". So, those three were the first in MY price range. Even when the IBM PC (5150 - "a danger to itself and others") was released (August 12, 1981), there was a waiting list of months to be able to get one. (about $1230? plus Floppy controller, Video board, and RS232, plus my own RAM, drives and monitor. The oft-quoted $1565 included an over-priced monitor - "well, you certainly can't USE one without a monitor!") Fortunately, I was able to get the "Technical Reference Manual" (with schematics and source for the BIOS!) well before the machine itself.