It was a machine that first went on sale in and is considered to have been the world's first "commercially available personal computer", coming on to the market some five years before Apple 1. In fact it was a panel of experts, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, meeting at the Boston Computer Museum in , which gave the Kenbak-1 its pre-eminent status.
Back in Mr Blankenbaker, then a computer engineer and consultant, put together his machine at his home in Brentwood, California. Unlike most hobby computers of the time, it was sold as an assembled and functioning machine rather than as a kit.
His ambition was that the device should be educational, give user satisfaction with simple programmes, and demonstrate as many programming concepts as possible. He demonstrated his prototype computer at a high school teacher's convention in southern California, and when the computer went into production, its advertising was focussed on the schools market, something he now feels was a mistake.
By the time Kenbak Corporation closed in it had completed one production run of just 50 computers, and is now virtually unknown today. Mr Blankenbaker, now 85, and retired to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, first became interested in computers when he was a first year physics student in the s.
It was a kludge but it inspired an interest in computers. Two years later he was an intern at the National Bureau of Standards where he was assigned to the Seac Standards Eastern Automatic Computer where he learned how a modern computer worked.
By he had described the future principles of the Kenbak-1 machine in an article entitled "Logically Microprogrammed Computers". The Kenbak-1 was designed before microprocessors were available - the logic consisted of small and medium scale integrated circuits mounted on one printed circuit board. MOS shift registers implemented the serial memory. The Kenbak-1's advertising in stated: "Fun Educational Modern Electronic Technology created the Kenbak-I with a price that even private individuals and small schools can afford.
Very quickly you, or your family or students, can write programs for fun and interest. It stands 11 feet long and 7 feet tall more than 3 meters long and 2 meters tall , contains 8, moving parts and weighs 15 tons Neither device would function on a desktop, but they are no doubt the first computers and precursors to the modern PC. And those computers influenced the development of the World Wide Web. If Charles Babbage was the genius behind the Analytic Engine, then Augusta Ada Byron, or Ada Lovelace, was the publicist and, arguably, the very first computer programmer.
She met Babbage at a party when she was 17 and became fascinated by the mathematician's computer engine. From that chance meeting grew a strong, dynamic relationship. Ada discussed Babbage's ideas with him and, because she was gifted in mathematics, offered her own insights.
In , she published an influential set of notes describing Babbage's Analytical Engine. Ada also added in some sage predictions, speculating that Babbage's mechanical computers might one day "act upon other things besides numbers" and "compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity …".
Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Who Invented the Computer? Charles Babbage created the concept of a programmable computer. Charles Babbage and the Analytical Engine " ". The first section consists of a series of cogs and gears designed to add up as a replacement for inefficient figure tables.
Six sections of the machine have survived. The Programmer and the Prophet. The first computer that resembled the modern machines we see today was invented by Charles Babbage between and He developed a device, the analytical engine, and worked on it for nearly 40 years. It was a mechanical computer that was powerful enough to perform simple calculations. Is the abacus the first computer? It flops but eventually evolves into the Macintosh. The Gavilan SC is the first portable computer with the familiar flip form factor and the first to be marketed as a "laptop.
This was the company's response to Apple's GUI. Commodore unveils the Amiga , which features advanced audio and video capabilities. More than two years later, only dot-coms had been registered. Its bit architecture provides as speed comparable to mainframes. Facebook, a social networking site, launches.
Google acquires Android, a Linux-based mobile phone operating system. Nintendo's Wii game console hits the market. They're usually each tailored to attack a particular algorithm," said study lead author Shantanu Debnath, a quantum physicist and optical engineer at the University of Maryland, College Park.
This richness provides a vast design space for exploring novel and multi-value ways to encode and process data beyond the 0s and 1s of current logic-based, digital architectures. Live Science. Kim Ann Zimmermann.
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