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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-sure-whodunnit dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

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 Secrest

The 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.


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:35PM (3 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:35PM (#919538) Journal

    I seem to recall the s100 computers far predating the Apple. They weren't as "user friendly", but they existed, and were a lot cheaper than the PDPs.

    OTOH, I don't know when the specs of the Apple 1 were published. (IIRC, it was a "build it yourself" computer.)

    FWIW, there were lots of "computer kits" available for a long time before any commercial action happened. But I don't know how many were scams, and certainly a lot were "analog computers" of really limited capability.

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  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:18AM (2 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:18AM (#919613) Journal
    Timex Sinclair, $99 circa 1981. Various Radio Shack programmable calculators with external cassette drives that ran BASIC, late 70s, Model 1, 1977; then Model 4 that ran xenix, 64k ram, 4 8" floppy 160k drives; Tandy 100 portable; Tandy colour computer, coco 2, coco 3, commodore PET 1977) Vic 20 - 1980 the first computer to ever sell 1 million units, C64, you name it, there was real competition in those days. Even Heathkit was selling a build-it-yourself computer (H8, 8080 cpu, running cp/m, 4K ram card was extra, as was everything else).m

    I don't remember anyone selling analog computers - tubes for cpu and mercury delay lines for serial (not random access) memory would have been much slower and more expensive to buy and to run by then, and way too bulky and power-hungry.

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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:29PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:29PM (#919926) Journal

      The Timex Sinclair was a late entry, so that's not significant here. But the S100 bus computers were around before I ever heard of the Apple.

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    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:51PM (#920436)

      Barbara (tom) Hudson CHEMICALLY CASTRATED itself with estrogen since you failed as a man lol! You also FAIL as a "woman" you NEUTERED delusional freakazoid! What is is like knowing you are a living mockery? A parody of both a 'woman' or a man! You know that. Everyone knows it about you "TraNsTeSticLe" hohohohoho. Barbara Hudson is a twistoid mental case deluding itself it is a REAL woman. Clue: You will never EVER be able to pass a DNA test due to the fact you do not, nor did you ever, possess female mitochondrial material you crackpot weirdo. It isn't logical to attempt to "fix" bodyparts that work with no issues. You had a working (extremely small) penis and balls you sawed off with estrogen hahahaha! Barbara Hudson breaks laws by possessing a SAWED OFF SHOTGUN, rotflmao!!!!