Breakout
We [Digital Equipment Corporation] could have come out with a personal computer in January 1975. If we had taken that prototype, most of which was proven stuff, the PDP-8 A could have been developed and put in production in that seven- or eight-month period.
–David Ahl, former DEC employee and founder of pioneer computer magazine Creative Computing
By 1970, there existed two distinct kinds of computers and two kinds of companies selling them.
The room-sized mainframe computers were built by IBM, CDC, Honeywell, and the other dwarfs. These machines were designed by an entire generation of engineers, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and were often custom-built one at a time.
Then you had the minicomputers built by such companies as DEC and Hewlett-Packard. Relatively cheap and compact, these machines were built in larger quantities than the mainframes and sold primarily to scientific laboratories and businesses. The typical minicomputer cost one-tenth as much as a mainframe and took up no more space than a bookshelf.
Minicomputers incorporated semiconductor devices, which reduced the size of the machines. The mainframes also used semiconductor components, but they generally used them to create even more powerful machines that were no smaller in size. Semiconductor tools such as the Intel 4004 were beginning to be used to control peripheral devices, including printers and tape drives, but it was obvious to everyone concerned that the chips could also be used to shrink the computer and make it cheaper. The mainframe computer and minicomputer companies had the money, expertise, and unequaled opportunity to place computers in the hands of nearly everyone. It didn’t take a visionary to see a personal-sized computer that could fit on a desktop or in a briefcase or in a shirt pocket at the end of the path toward increased miniaturization. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the major players among mainframe and minicomputer companies seemed the most logical candidates for producing a personal computer.
It was obvious that computer development was headed in that direction. Ever since the 1930s when Benjamin Burack was developing his “logic machine,” people had been building desktop- and briefcase-sized machines that performed computerlike functions. Computer-company engineers and designers at semiconductor companies foresaw a continuing trend of components becoming increasingly cheap, fast, and small year after year. The indicators pointed undoubtedly to the development of a small personal computer by, most likely, a minicomputer company.
It was only logical, but it didn’t happen that way. Every one of the existing computer companies passed up the chance to bring computers into the home and to every work desk. The next generation of computers, the microcomputer, was created entirely by individual entrepreneurs working outside the established corporations.
It wasn’t that the idea of a personal computer had never occurred to the decision makers at the major computer companies. Eager engineers at some of those firms offered detailed proposals for building microcomputers and even working prototypes, but the proposals were rejected and the prototypes shelved. In some cases, work actually commenced on personal-computer projects, but eventually they, too, were allowed to wither and die.
The mainframe companies apparently thought that no market existed for low-cost personal computers, and even if there were such a market, they figured it was the minicomputer companies who would exploit it. They were wrong.
Take Hewlett-Packard, a company that grew up in Silicon Valley and was producing everything from mainframe computers to pocket calculators. Senior engineers at HP studied and eventually spurned a design offered by one of their employees, an engineer without a degree named Stephen Wozniak. In rejecting his design, the HP engineers acknowledged that Wozniak’s computer worked and could be built cheaply, but they told him it was not a product for HP. Wozniak eventually gave up on his employers and built his computers out of a garage in a start-up enterprise called Apple.
Likewise, Robert (Bob) Albrecht, who worked for CDC in Minneapolis during the early 1960s, quit in frustration over the company’s unwillingness to even consider looking into the personal-computer market. After leaving CDC, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and established himself as a sort of computer guru. Albrecht was interested in exploring ways computers could be used as educational aids. He produced what could be called the first publication on personal computing and spread information on how individuals could learn about and use computers.
DEC
The prime example of an established computer company that failed to explore the new technology was Digital Equipment Corporation. With annual sales close to a billion dollars by 1974, DEC was the first and the largest of the minicomputer companies. DEC made some of the most compact computers available at the time. The PDP-8, which had inspired Ted Hoff to design the 4004, was the closest thing to a personal computer one could find. One version of the PDP-8 was so small that sales reps routinely carried it in the trunks of their cars and set it up at the customer’s site. In that sense, it was one of the first portable computers. DEC could have been the company that created the personal computer. The story of its failure to seize that opportunity gives some indication of the mentality in computer companies’ boardrooms during the early 1970s.
For David Ahl, the story began when he was hired as a DEC marketing consultant in 1969. By that time, he had picked up degrees in electrical engineering and business administration and was finishing up his PhD in educational psychology. Ahl came to DEC to develop its educational product line, the first product line at DEC to be defined in terms of its potential users rather than its hardware.
Figure 14. David Ahl Ahl left Digital Equipment Corporation in 1974 to start Creative Computing magazine and popularize personal computers. (Courtesy of David H. Ahl)
Four years later, responding to the recession of 1973, DEC cut back on educational-product development. When Ahl protested the cuts, he was fired. Rehired into a division of the company dedicated to developing new hardware, he soon became entirely caught up in building a computer that was smaller than any yet built. Ahl’s group didn’t know what to call the machine, but if it had taken off it certainly would have qualified as a personal computer.
Figure 15. Basic Computer Games David Ahl’s book Basic Computer Games was translated into eight languages and sold more than a million copies, playing an important role in popularizing personal computers in the late 1970s. (Courtesy of David H. Ahl)
Ahl’s interests had grown somewhat incompatible with the DEC mindset. DEC viewed computers as an industrial product. “Like pig iron. DEC was interested in pushing out iron,” Ahl later recalled. When he was working in DEC’s educational division, Ahl wrote a newsletter that regularly published instructions for playing computer games. Ahl talked the company into publishing a book he had put together, Basic Computer Games. He was beginning to view the computer as an individual educational tool, and games seemed a natural part of that.
DEC wasn’t set up to sell computers to individuals, but Ahl had learned something about the potential market for personal computers while working in DEC’s educational-products division. The division would occasionally receive requests from doctors or engineers or other professionals who wanted a computer to manage their practices. Some of DEC’s machines were actually cheap enough to sell to professionals, but the company wasn’t prepared to handle such requests. A big difference existed between selling to individuals and selling to an organization that could hire engineers and programmers to maintain a computer system and could afford to buy technical support from DEC. The company was not ready to handle customer support for individuals.
The team Ahl was working with intended that this new product bring computers into new markets such as schools. Although its price tag would keep it out of the reach of most households, Ahl saw schools as the wedge to get the machines into the hands of individuals, specifically schoolkids. The machines could be sold in large quantities to schools, to be used individually by students. Ahl figured that Heath, a company specializing in electronics hobby equipment, would be willing to build a kit version of the DEC minicomputer, which would lower the price even more.
The new computer was built into a DEC terminal, inside of which circuit boards thick with semiconductor devices were jammed around the base of the tube. The designers had packed every square inch of the terminal case with electronics. The computer was no larger than a television set, although heavier. Ahl had not designed the device, but he felt as protective of it as if it were his own child. He presented his plan for marketing personal computers at a meeting of DEC’s operations committee.
Kenneth Olsen, the president of the company and regarded throughout the industry as one of its wisest executives, was there along with some vice presidents and a few outside investors. As Ahl later recalled, the board was polite but not enthusiastic about the project, although the engineers seemed interested. After some tense moments, Olsen said that he could see no reason why anyone would want a home computer. Ahl’s heart sank. Although the board had not actually rejected the plan, he knew that without Olsen’s support it would fail.
Ahl was now utterly frustrated. He had been getting calls from executive search firms offering him jobs, and told himself the next time a headhunter called he would accept the offer. Ahl, like Wozniak and Albrecht and many others, had walked out the door and into a revolution.