VBWired.com

Desktop computers were widely produced throughout the late 1970s and 1990s. One class that Hewlett Packard first introduced as a high-end programmable calculator was the HP 9830 which integrated a keyboard, ROM based HP BASIC OS, cassette drive, and 32 character LED display and a fast printer into one desktop unit, and could drive a graphics plotter.

The business unit in Loveland, Colorado that produced the series was called HP’s “Desktop Computer Division”. The IBM 5100, Wang 2200, and Tektronix 4051 were similar desktop sized integrated computers, some of which evolved into scientific workstations or small business computers.

Modular boxes that needed external storage and terminals were named “microcomputers” to differentiate them from the mainframe and minicomputers that were traditionally available for sale by the major computer companies at the time. In 1975 the MITS Altair 8800 became the first pre-assembled desktop computer available on the market. However, due to the computer’s design being geared more towards the hobbyist market the appeal of the machine was limited.

1977 saw the near-simultaneous release in the U.S. of three computers that equally deserve mention as the forerunners of today’s desktop computer: the Apple II, the Commodore PET. and the Tandy TRS-80 computer. Each of these machines would be considered crude by today’s standards; the TRS-80, for example, comprised a green phosphor 12? screen, an expansion box with 219 kilobytes of memory, a keyboard and a cassette recorder. It retailed for around £695.

These computers also integrated display memory, keyboard, and sometimes storage and CRT into one unit.

Through the 1980s the desktop computer became more and more commonplace in society. Sales boomed as a wide spectrum of users, from the largest corporation down to the individual at home, found exciting new uses for the machines. However, it was not until the internet explosion in the mid-1990s that the desktop computer became nearly ubiquitous in our modern era.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.