Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market

Summary

In 1977, three new microcomputers appeared on the scene that broke free from the industry’s hobbyist roots: the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80. Much later, in the 1990s, journalists and historians began reverently referring to this group as “the Trinity.” Though all three machines had different origins and different trajectories (Apple, for example, appeared in 1978 to be an also-ran before rising to eclipse all of its rivals), the distinctiveness of the 1977 generation of computers is not merely a retrospective imputation by later writers. The hobby journalists of the time recognized that with the Trinity, something like an “appliance” computer had arrived on the scene, “a clean break from commercial and hobbyist computer systems requiring technical skill and dedication from their operators into a consumer market where no qualifications are required of the customer.”[1] Three factors were required to join this holy ensemble: the technical expertise to design a capable and reliable microcomputer, a nose for the larger business opportunity latent in the hobby computer market, and the capital resources to produce, market, and sell thousands (or even tens of thousands) of computers per month. Most of all it required a certain measure of daring, a willingness to a take a leap in the dark. After all, the transformation of the microcomputer hobby into a large-scale commercial enterprise came as a surprise to most outsiders. In 1977, the established mainframe and minicomputer makers remained cooly aloof from the microcomputer business. Clearly, computer enthusiasts had found in the Altair and its successors a fascinating gadget to occupy their spare hours. It did not necessarily follow that these toys had anything to do with the “real” computer business, any more than model rocketry had to do with putting a man on the moon. In a la of the leading minicomputer makers, Hewlett-Packard and Digital, were offered ready-made micro designs by comput...