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Hitting the Books: Did the advent of the first desktop computer lead to murder?
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti: IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World's First Desktop Computer
by Meryle SecrestThe world's first desktop computer didn't take shape in a Menlo Park garage or the bowels of a corporate production facility. It was created in a workshop in Northwest Italy owned and operated by the Olivetti family. Already renowned for their mechanical typewriters, the Olivetti pioneered electronic calculation a decade before Apple or IBM, which (as you'll read below) debuted at the New York World's Fair in 1964. The first of its kind, the P101, became an instant smash hit -- everyone from NASA to the US military was clamoring for these highly sought after "super-calculators."
But was the Olivetti family's fortune actually a curse? Shortly after the P101's debut, Adriano Olivetti, the head of the family suffered a mysterious and fatal heart attack at the age of 58, just 18 months before the company's talented engineer, Mario Tchou, died in an equally suspicious car accident. In The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti, author Meryle Secrest reveals the incredible behind-the-scenes story of the first desktop computer.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by crunchy_one on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:00PM (2 children)
Apple didn't exist in 1964 and IBM ruled the roost when it came to electronic computation. The IBM pavilion at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair showed off an amazing amount of IBM computer hardware, already well into its third generation.
As far as early personal computers go, the prize goes to the Bendix G-15, a general purpose electronic computer that sold for about $50K in 1956.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:56PM (1 child)
A new house for an average family in 1956 might have run around $18K, so $50K doesn't quite qualify as "personal" for the time.
When the IBM PCs came around in the mid 1980s, they ran around $5K while average houses were more in the $80-100K range. My job in 1991 paid $30K per year, and put a $5K 386 PC with 15" color monitor on my desk. I didn't buy my own IBM compatible PC until several years later, after I bought an $80K house, and I think my PC was about $1500 for a 486DX2.
Today, median home prices are pushing $300K, and you can buy an 1.7GHz Octacore cellphone with 4GB of RAM, 128GB of flash, 1080p+ touchscreen and quad HD cameras for ~$150. Inflation adjusted that cellphone would have cost less than $16, or 16 hours of 1956 minimum wage, whereas the Bendix G-15 would cost about 25 years of full time minimum wage.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by crunchy_one on Tuesday November 12 2019, @11:27PM
You make a valid point that the G-15's price made it not very personal for the home user of 1956, but that was never its market. The G-15 was a personal computer in the sense that it and its software was designed to be used by one programmer at a time. A programmer sat down at the G-15's typewriter to write and debug interactively. Harry D. Huskey, the G-15's architect, was awarded his own G-15 in recognition of its popularity. He installed it in his garage.