Travel through thePCstory

Notable firsts

• learn how the first email came about – and the first spam email
• see how a calculator company forced the development of the microprocessor
• find out how two guys maxing out on cream soda developed an early PC
• learn about the first search engine being developed by someone from Barbados
• see how a major corporate developed the PC but did not bring it to market
• read what the first Twitter message said

The first PC?

• was it MIT’s LINC, Laboratory Instrument Computer?
• was it the Micral N?
• or Xerox PARC’s Alto?
• Scelbi?
• Sphere 1? – as Byte magazine once suggested
• the HP911A – first to use the term PC in print?
• IBM‘s 5100?  Or its 5150 IBM PC?  First with the name in its title
• MITS Altair 8800
• Apple 1?

Once you have made up your mind – make sure you vote here

Namesakes

• check out the two pioneers named Dreyfus – Hubert and Philippe to see their rather different contributions to the development of the PC
• or look at the two Eckert’s – J Presper and Wallace John – both early contributors
• or the two Burkhardts operating a century and a continent apart – Artur and Henry
• see how two people named Hayes kept us interconnected – Dennis and Vic
• then there are two named French – Don and Gordon

Moonlighting

• learn how a political prisoner sent to a gulag lit the blue touchpaper to the Internet
• see how an operation selling rocketry kits became the first PC kit hit
• see the PC pioneers who took off in to space – Charles Simonyi and Richard Garriott
• learn how it was software profits that funded the first manned and fully privately funded spaceflight
• and the pioneer who invested the money made in the PC business into launching rockets

Creative clusters

• the hackers at MIT’s TMRC
• human-machine augmentation at ARC
• the hobbyists of the Homebrew Computer Club
• the esoteric thinkers at PARC
• the graphics innovation from the University of Utah