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Monday, 26 January 2009 13:15 |
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Page 1 of 4 The SWTP effect - a UK perspective
In the early 80s a collective madness descended on the UK. A craze the like of which had never been seen, sprang from a very unlikely source - the computer. Many readers of this site will remember what happened when home computers first came on the scene, while others will be far too young to have known about it. But fewer people know about the run up to those momentous days and the strange goings on of 30 years ago.
Before I describe the events you need to know that before 1975 computers really were rare. You certainly didn’t bump into one every day. They mostly cost a small fortune and lived in banks, Fortune 100 companies or universities. Some schools were lucky enough to have access to a machine - but usually by sending in decks of punched cards. There wasn’t really any way for the average person to get interested in computing because they just didn’t get anywhere near one.
The only privileged group were university students who usually had access to a few minutes of computing time a week that could be used for trying things out under the disguise of learning to program! Many got hooked on this simple pleasure and then found themselves thrown out into a computer-less world at the end of their courses.
For the electronics enthusiast the home computer had long been a dream. The arrival of low cost integrated circuits had made the dream more possible but still a long way off. Occasionally circuits for analog computers would be published and one issue of the magazine Wireless World carried a design for what it referred to as a digital computer - but in reality was just a few demonstration gates and flip-flops in an attractive box. There were a small number of desktop calculator designs around 1972 but that was a close as anyone got to a computer without spending large sums of money. You also have to remember that electronic calculators were only just becoming cheap enough to be commonplace. Before this calculations that could not be done using mental arithmetic often involved a slide rule or a mechanical calculator.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 26 January 2009 17:47 )
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