Hello, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/610.html The 610 was under development as the Personal Automatic Computer (acording to this website and according to Bashe et al. in the MIT book IBM's Early Computer, a prototype was operating by 1954 with commercial release by 1957) it was intended as a more real time less batch modey sort of machine unlike other machines of that time, but no one really seriously seems to claim it has any relation to any other "personal computer" either in terms of hardware details (it apparently had very ideosyncratic hardware) or even as vague inspiration. The key point I guess is that it pretty clearly has nothing to do with the microprocessor based computers of the 1970s and later that are usually called personal computers. I have noticed that the idea of a personal computer and personal computing gets used to describe machines before the microprocessor machines of the 1970s. The website mentions the Bendix G-15 as another example of this (some apparently claim it as the first personal computer and it was released commercially in 1956). The issue here is that any computer an individual has complete control of regardless of its characteristics (size, intended use etc.) can become a personal computer in terms of how that user feels about it and interacts with it. So any computer can be a personal computer in that ambigious sense it seems to me. It also gets complicated because people's interactions with earlier transistor and vacuum tube machines influenced them in designing and using the microprocessor machines that are unambigiously personal computers. So there are connections that should be made that make it complicated. -- Yours Truly, Allan Olley, PhD http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/ On Wed, 2 Mar 2016, John Impagliazzo wrote:
Hi All,
Allegedly, some consider the IBM 610 Auto-Point computer (1959) the ‘first personal computer’.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/plugboard.html
Is this true – even slightly true??
John
John Impagliazzo, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University
IEEE Life Fellow
ACM Distinguished Educator