At The Register, Tony Smith charts twenty significant items that lead to modern personal computers:
Personal computing. Personal. Computing. We take both aspects so completely for granted these days, it’s almost impossible to think of a time when computing wasn’t personal — or when there was no electronic or mechanical computing.
To get from there to here, we’ve gone from a time when ‘computers’ were people able to do perform complex calculations themselves, through mechanical systems intended to do the work for them and then to powered machines able to automate the process. These led to systems that could be programmed to perform not only mathematical tasks but to store and retrieve other forms of data, taking us right up to desktop devices for a one-on-one interaction with computing power.
Since then, that power has been compressed into smaller, more convenient packages: laptops, tablets and smartphones.
What a trip. In memory of the many people who have help us along, here then are some of the key stages of that journey, represented by the 20 objects that, to us, most embody the steps that brought us to where we are today.
It’s not a comprehensive list — and feel free to comment with the devices you think we should have included — but here are the first ten of our 20 items, from the early days up to the end of the 1970s. Part two will bring us from the 1980s to the present day.
