(written for West Country Life Magazine)
The years between the 1960s to late 1970s saw a revolution in computers, not just in their size and ability to conduct ever more complicated tasks, but in our whole perception of what a computer was really for. The noted technology commentator Howard Rheingold has called machines from this period ‘mind amplifiers’, computers that were no longer just built around the limitations of the technology but designed to actively support the potential of the user. You and I would know of these revolutionary machines by their other name: Personal Computers.
As is usually the case with technology, the real story of the PC involves many smaller inventions that would eventually combine into one universal product. And by the time the first wave of ready to use personal computers were released onto the world in 1977 (the apple II, Commodore PET and Radio Shack TRS-80) they would contain a whole host of design concepts and gadgets which had been bubbling slowly away in research labs and obscure military applications for decades. Some of the ideas were so blatantly obvious now that we forget people had to actively think them up in the first place. The important inventions of course included the microchip and disk or cassette storage which both helped to drive the size and price down to a level we could all afford. But it also included the addition of a keyboard and screen to simplify the inputting and reading of the data, a mouse or tracker ball to catapult the machine from an electronic typewriter to an interactive sketchpad, the introduction of universally recognised icons and an efficient digital filing system to store, retrieve and navigate the information with ease, as well as much more beside. When you look back at it, many of these key developments sprung out from a few US based research labs who each had a growing interest in Augmented Intelligence.
Augmented Intelligence (often known as Intelligence Amplification or IA) is a term that has somewhat lost popularity these days but remains a cornerstone for many new inventions. It emerged during the 1950s and looked at the way machines were designed so they could help improve the human experience. At the time this approach was ground-breaking because it turned the perceived wisdom of what a computer was on its head. For example, in the early 1950s a computer was just a giant calculator and would require a plethora of highly trained technicians to understand all the lights, switches and oscilloscope that were needed to keep the thing running efficiently. Under such circumstances computing would remain an elite occupation with limited uses to anyone outside of business. However, when IA came along it challenged people to make computers more user friendly in turn helping them make better use of the computer’s growing capabilities.
It is interesting to note that much of the initial funding (at least in the US) for IA came directly out of the Cold War and Space Race. As America mobilised to protect itself from the communist threat and also promised to get people to the moon by the end of the 1960s, both government and military officials realised computers would need to play a central role in these aims, and that we would need a more efficient way of using them too. With this firmly in mind, money was channelled into a few key research centres including MIT and Stanford with plenty of expectation placed upon them. At MIT the focus was to support the work of the new national radar defence system (SAGE) that had been set up. Since missiles and jets were now faster and deadlier than ever, a department under the direction of psychologist and computer scientist Joseph Licklider was set up with the aim of trying to simplify some of the complex data collected by the computer in order to allow the SAGE staff to make quicker and more reliable decisions. Licklider’s suggestions included things that seem obvious to us today but were pioneering at the time including the introduction of personal keyboards, CRT screens (monitors) and a screen responsive light pen. Licklider would also lay the theoretical and practical foundations for ARPANET, an interconnected network which would eventually develop into the modern internet. Of course, the vast military computer consoles that were produced by SAGE were not exactly what we would call personal computing, but even so should be recognised as the first attempts at personalising the interaction between the computer and user.
While MIT were working on their consoles, NASA began funding Stanford Research Institute to assist them also. The ‘Augmented Research Laboratory’ (ARL) was set up and was led by a free-thinking engineer named Douglas Engelbert. Once again the place would become a hotbed of innovation but importantly in 1968 they would demonstrate a strange little device Engelbert initially called a ‘Bug’ (before going with the name ‘Mouse’ because he thought the connected lead looked quite like tail). ARL would also develop other milestone tools such as a primitive desktop filing system, the ability to edit information on the screen, as well as live video broadcasting. This team would also be involved with the pioneering ARPANET group, but when several of the key engineers left Stanford at the start of the 70s to work for the Xerox firm, they took with them their progressive ideas and integrated them into a ground-breaking computer called the Xerox Alto. This was the first commercial machine to use a mouse, graphical interface, keyboard and screen. Released in 1973 the Alto failed to sell well, but it very directly influenced that first batch of personal computers that would be released only 4 years later.
There were of course plenty of other important elements which added to the success of the PC and not all the innovation was exclusively US based. But when personal computers were finally released to the public in the late 1970s the explosion of interest they caused should not be attributed to any singular invention but to the way the whole package had become so user oriented. For the first time here was a machine that any untrained individual could use with ease and was cheap enough and versatile enough to suit most of our personal needs. It is no wonder therefore that the term ‘Personal’ and not ‘Micro’ computer has been the phrase that has stuck with us all these years.
Photo attribution: mainframe computer by Travis Wise ; Commodore Pet Computer by tomislav medak ; Apple Lisa Mouse by Marcin Wichary ; Sage System Console by Steve Jurvetson ; Xerox Alto Computer by Francisco Antunes ;