The conference of the First Museum European of data processing

 

 

 

The IT saga

The personal computer is nowadays widespread in all companies. Here is the history of those machines which became essential to us.

May 1966 :

Steven Gray creates the Amateur Society Computer. One can consider that it is the birth of personal data processing.

Summer 1971 :

Bill Fernandez and Steve Wozniak create the Cream Soda Computer.

November 1971 :

INTEL markets first micro computer MCS-4 based on its very new microprocessor 4004 and also containing Rom INTEL 4001, a RAM INTEL 4002 and one shift register INTEL 4003.

Autumn 1971 :

The National Radio operator Institute sells for 503 $, the first kit making it possible to even mount a micro computer oneself.

1971 : Computer in kit Kenback-1 sold 750 $ with 1 Kbit of memory MOS.

1972 : Bill Gates and Paul Allen create the company Traf-O-Dated which sells a system based on an INTEL 8008 to measure the road traffic.

May 1973 : The first microcomputer appears: it is the Micral conceived by François Gernelle of company RÈ directed by André Truong Trong Thi. This microcomputer is based on microprocessor INTEL 8008.
June 1973 :

The word microcomputer (microcomputer) appears for the first time in the American press in an article about the Micral.
1973 :

Gary Kildall writes the first operating system for microcomputers: CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers). It became the operating system of predilection for the first micro computers of professional use. In the middle of the Seventies, it seemed to have to last definitively but the choice of an interpreter BASIC in the first micro computers of personal use made it disappear quickly from the scene.

1973 :

Appearance of the kit computer Scelbi-8H based on an INTEL 8008 and sold 565 $ with 1 Kbit of programmable memory.

July 1974 :

Article in Radio operator Electronics magazine to build to oneself even the microcomputer Mark-8 (INTEL 8008) designed by Jonathan Titus.

1974 :

Appearance of the first review devoted to the microcomputer: The Computer Hobbyist magazine.

At the end of 1974 :

Gary Kildall and his wife create Intergalactic DIGITAL Research Inc. (famous thereafter DIGITAL Research Inc) bus to market this operating system for microcomputers.

February 1975 : Paul Allen presents its very new BASIC written for Altair ED Roberts, to his designer. Bill Gates and Paul Allen sell a licence of BASIC with MITS, the company of ED Roberts. The BASIC becomes the first advanced language available on microcomputer.

On the photograph gone back opposite to 1977, one can see Paul Allen and Bill Gates.

March 1975 : First meeting of Homebrew Computer Club in a garage of Menlo Park in California. Among the 32 participants, one can note the presence of Steve Wozniak. A demonstration of Altair is carried out. (the photograph presented is more recent because one can notice an APPLE I on the table)

April 1975 : Harry Garland and Roger Melen receive the second prototype of Altair built by ED Roberts. The first prototype was lost in 1974 by the conveyor at the time of the sending to the review Popular Electronics. To altair was based on new processor INTEL 8080 turning with 2 MHz, addressing 64 KB of memory and carrying out 640000 instructions a second. MITS starts to sell it in April for 395 $ (498 $ assembled) with 256 bytes of memory.
The name of this machine comes from an episode of the series Star Trek: " Voyage to Altair ".

 

June 1975 :

Bill Gates and Paul Allen re-elect their company Traf-O-Dated in Microcomputer-Software (the dash will disappear later).

July 1975 :

Bill Gates and Paul Allen put on sale the version 4 KB and 8 KB of their BASIC 2.0

September 1975 :

The first number of the American review Byte magazine is published.
December 1975 :

Paul Terrell opens the first store devoted to microprocessing: Shop byte in Mountain View in California.
1975 :

Michael Shrayer writes the first word processing software for micro computer on his Altair: Electric Pencil.
February 1976 :

Bill Gates publishes a first letter open in the press to complain about the data-processing hacking (already!!!).

March-April 1976 : Steve Jobs (21 years, working at Atari) and Steve Wozniak (26 years, working at Hewlet Packard) finish their computer which they baptize APPLE Computer. They create the APPLE company on April 1, 1976. The computer will be sold at the Shop Byte for 666.66 $ with 256 bytes of ROM, 8 K bytes of RAM and an output video on television set. Its ROM enables him to be operational as of lighting because it contains a small program called " monitor " which makes it possible to re-enter the hexadecimal code directly to the keyboard. It is then enough to re-enter 4 K bytes of hexadecimal code of the BASIC to the hand to be able to use this language with 4 K remaining bytes. It is told that Steve Wozniak knew the code by heart and could seize it in 20 minutes: -)