Why Own a Computer?

My first computer was an IBM 386 copy in around 1987. I didn’t really know what to do with it, I just knew you “should have one” and I was late in getting one. But then I got a dot matrix printer and I started writing reports, minutes and speeches (!) for my optometric political career, so I found a use for them! It was only when I could see MY words in print that I really got interested!

They looked something like this:

In time I got fancier and by the time the kids arrived I had this:

I was unaware of the history that led up to my PC. Now I read this:

By 1970, the famous electronics and computer hobbyists club in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Homebrew Computer Club was founded, and Apple Computer was formed. Since computers could actually do very little, what reason did the founders of Apple give to people for buying its products? Well . . . so “that you and your family increase familiarity with the computer itself”!

The center of attention in Homebrew meetings during the middle years of the 1970s was the MITS Altair 8800, first released in 1975 and available by mail order from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Generally regarded as the first personal computer (PC), the Altair is completely unrecognizable as a usable machine today. In addition to its internal electronics, the entire system consisted of a case and a series of toggle switches and light bulbs on the front panel — no keyboard, no screen, no disk drive. Programs had to be entered as individual binary numbers by flipping the switches on the front; the only evidence that the program had done its job was a change in which bulbs were lit.

“Personal computing would have remained a hobbyist’s passion were it not for the gradual infusion of computer-liberation culture. As a group, Homebrewers had a generally anti-establishment streak. Steve Wozniak, one half of the founding duo of Apple Computer, initially became widely known within Homebrew as a maker of ‘blue boxes’ — small electronic devices that emitted push-button telephone tones and permitted making free phone calls.