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#vintageads

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Blake Patterson

A History of the Microcomputer Industry in 300 Adverts

nosher.net/archives/computers/

nosher.netA history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts In a private room at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in January 1977, Commodore showed the world's first complete "personal computer" - the PET 2001 - an "appliance" micro that for the first time could be taken out of the box, plugged in and used by regular people without a soldering iron. Soon, Tandy and Apple joined in and the market grew steadily, but then Commodore and Sinclair launched cheap home computers in the early 80s that changed everything. The market exploded from tens of thousands of machines a year to millions, as famous 1970s names like Cromemco, IMSAI, Nascom and MITS were swept away. Micro companies were suddenly worth $1 billion dollars and their employees were millionaires. Hundreds of companies launched hundreds of incompatible machines. Price wars were started, old scores were settled and companies were destroyed. Eight bits made way for 16 and 32 in the space of a few years. For a while Britain led the world in manufacture and adoption, with 80% of all computers sold in Europe being sold in the UK. The fate of many microcomputer companies. From a Business Operating Software advert in Personal Computer World, June 1986. Then the 8-bit market reached saturation and more companies imploded - Sinclair was sold for its name and assets only, Acorn almost didn't make it and a raft of also-rans fell by the wayside - Camputers, Dragon Data, Elan, Oric and Jupiter Cantab to name but a few. Even big names like Timex and Texas Instruments were burned. Meanwhile, the sleeping giant that was IBM launched its 5150 at the end of 1981 and watched as it slowly but inevitably over the next few years became the standard. Other companies cloned it, copied and improved it and soon the only game in town was the IBM PC. From the latter half of the 1980s, every micro company and its dog was building generic beige boxes, and people wanted the same beige boxes at home and work. The home computer as a concept was dead, and the "wonder years" were over. This collection of over 300 adverts attempts to tell something of that story...
#vintagecomputing#retrocomputing#vintagecomputers
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Sini Tuulia

And, in the ephemera of the ads section: I'm not sure your brand logo is all that timeless if a person only 120 years into the future has absolutely no idea what it says. And I've done calligraphy and can read multiple medieval fonts! And both of my parent's handwriting, and they're healthcare professionals!

An old ad from a Victorian magazine, yellowed, done in red ink. It's advertising cocoa, but the brand name is done in such a bizarre and hard to read stylised cursive font that it's impossible for me to make out what it is. "Use unintelligible's cocoa. Best as to flavour, best as to quality. Ask your grocer for indecipherable, take no other." There's an illustration of the tin, also, it's a nice tin. The end of the word is probably Y L E R and possessive S, but the rest is unclear and looks like cursive Cyrillic more than English!
#Ephemera#VintageAds
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