From scientific instrument to everyday appliance: The emergence of personal computers, 1970–77

Summary In a technology whose history seems always to be characterized by a series of “revolutions,” the invention of the personal computer in the mid‐1970s seems the greatest of all. This paper examines to what extent the PC was “merely” a result of advances in semiconductor technology, or whether it was the result of a conscious effort by actors to effect a social transformation of computing. It looks first from the top down, as a small group of people sought to adapt large, expensive mainframe systems to personal use. It then looks from the bottom up, as advances in semiconductor technology led to consumer products that pointed (in hindsight) to the PC How these two trends met and joined one another is shown to be unexpected, not planned by either group of actors. Finally, it is shown that this so‐called revolutionary phenomenon has deep roots in the large systems, especially software, that preceeded it.

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