The Personal Computer
The development of the personal computer is closely tied to the invention of the microprocessor.
Before the microprocessor computers were hulking peices of machinery that took up entire
rooms. By etching thousands of transistors into a tiny silicon chip both the size and
cost of processors were reduced dramatically.
The Altair 8800 is considered to be the first personal computer. It came in a kit form and
used Intel's 8080 processor. The only input it had was a row of switches across the front
and the only output it had was a series of LEDs across the front. This seriously hampered
it's usefullness, but people found uses for it anyway. One of the most successfull ventures
for the Altair was done by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and that was the writing of BASIC for
the Altiar.
The next great leap forward after the Altair was the Apple II. The Apple II was a huge leap
in the direction of modern personal computers. It was an all-in-one design, everything came
enclosed in the same case, including the keyboard. This was a great releif from the kit
forms of earlier computers. The Apple II also supported color graphics, had a built-in
BASIC interpreter, and Apple offered an incredible floppy disk drive for use with the Apple
II.
For more information about this topic read Bryan's research paper on the Development of the Personal Computer in the 1970's.
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