Great question. I'd endorse what Michael says here: there will not be much overlap between "new and incredible" language and "instructional videos supplied with the machine". Promoters focused their efforts very strongly on the potential consumer who hadn't taken the box home yet: producing video material to support existing users wasn't generally seen to be worth it till it could be treated as a routine exercise, ie, until computers were already widely familiar.

I'm mainly familiar with the British case, and there could be a difference here in that the VCR reached critical mass earlier in the US. No producer in Britain in the early 80s would have packaged a videocassette with the machine, because the typical user wouldn't have anything to play it on. An audio cassette would have been a possibility, but I'm not aware of any. The earliest machines were largely sold to technically capable enthusiasts (compare hi-fi or CB radio) and rarely had any documentation aimed at the general user. Probably the first affordable machine to seek a broader market over here was the Sinclair ZX81 of 1981: the package contained only the machine, its cables, a programming manual for the Basic language, and a software catalogue. The more powerful BBC Micro, launched the same year, came with a data cassette containing a series of introductory demo programs, guidance being provided on-screen and through minimal print documentation.

"New and incredible" was, however, certainly a major trope in promotion of computers in the 70s and early 80s -- but it came mainly through other sources such as TV commercials and print magazines, and also through broadcast documentaries and educational resources, including audio guides and film, which basically served to promote home computers by taking a line that said "new information technology is transforming our society; we'd better be prepared for it". Again a rather specific UK case, but the BBC Computer Literacy Project which endorsed the BBC Micro developed a whole range of TV, radio and adult education materials (see for instance <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMWEiCdsfc>): it could be taken for granted by 1982 that the average newcomer to computing had had some exposure to this kind of material before going out and buying a machine.

Hope this helps
Best
James

On 09/09/2014 16:37, Michael Newman wrote:
Hi Luisa, in my research on home computers from the 1970s I haven't found that the idea of personal computing was always represented as something new and incredible. Computers were familiar to people (many of whom had a negative impression of them as instruments of institutional control) and it wasn't clear what needs a home computer would satisfy. One persistent question in articles about home computers in magazines like Esquire was: what are you actually going to do with it? A frequent answer was that you would use a computer to learn how to use a computer. Probably the most common use for many people who bought a computer for the home was playing games, which wasn't so different from using something like an Atari VCS. In advertisements for home computers on TV, you will find some of that "new and incredible" tone -- they're selling a product, after all, though what they're selling is as much a platform for games as it is a computer for programming or other more "productive" uses. The "Atari brings the computer age home" campaign would offer some nice examples of this, and some (in poor quality) are on YouTube. 

michael z. newman zigzigger | @mznewman
assoc prof, journalism, advertising, & media studies, uw-milwaukee




On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Luisa Emmi Beck <emmi.beck@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi SIGCIS members, 

I'm working on a radio story about the history of personal computing.  

I would like to find instructional videos for the first Macintosh or other personal computers. The goal is to give listeners a sense for how new and incredible the idea of personal computing was in the 1970s. ​Does anyone on this list know of where I could find such videos? I haven't been able to find anything on YouTube but I'm hoping to be able to track down a few instructional videos (or at least the audio portion of the videos). 

Thanks! 

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