In 1975, Commodore acquired it’s microprocessor subsidiary MOS Technology, who brought with them designs for a computer kit based on their 6502 microprocessor. Deciding not to focus on building calculators, Commodore president Jack Tramiel ordered the design of a machine around the kit at the urging of designer Chuck Peddle….
In 1977, a TCP message makes a trip through a packet-radio host, a satellite network host, and an ARPANet host without losing a single unit of information. The transmission demonstrates the feasibility of TCP-based networking. Enabling distinct networks to communicate with each other, the details were published in a paper…
The first Cray-1® system by Cray Research (originally Control Data Corporation) was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million. It boasted a world-record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second (160 megaflops) and an 8 megabyte (1 million word) main memory. The Cray-1’s architecture reflected…
Byte was a hugely influential computer magazine that begain in 1975 and was published throughout the 1980s. It covered development in the entire field of software and computers, was published monthly, and sold for a yearly subscription of $10. The first issue was printed in September 1975, and featured ads…
Lee Felsenstein is an electronic design engineer who was a participant in the early development of personal computers. Two of his designs (the Sol-20 and the Osborne-1) are on display in the Smithsonian, as is the story of the Homebrew Computer Club, which he chaired and where open architecture was…