Good morning,
Whitewater’s forecast calls for a chance of showers with a high temperature of eight-five degrees.
There’s a Common Council meeting tonight in Whitewater, at 6:30 p.m. The agenda is available online.
Wired recalls that on this date in 1977,
Tandy Corp of Texas announces that it will manufacture the first mass-produced personal computer. The TRS-80 — lovingly called the “Trash 80” — would be an early rock star in the PC era and give the flagging Radio Shack franchise bragging rights as “biggest name in little computers.”
The TRS-80 was a desktop machine, woefully underpowered by today’s standards — 4 KB of RAM, (expandable to 16 KB!), a 12-inch monitor, a built-in cassette-based data recorder and BASIC interpreter. Oh, yes, it came with Blackjack and Backgammon.
But the Model I was a staggering success in its day, a time when your choice was either building your own computer from a kit or buying something for thousands of dollars. The Model I was yours for $600 ($2,160 in today’s coin), and all you had to do was plug it in — although it did require three separate AC outlets to power everything up.
This was the dawn of the personal computing age, and nobody quite knew what the rage would be, or even why. There wasn’t much your average non-techie could do or would want to with a computer. And yet, there was something in the air.
This wasn’t the first personal computer, but it was the first that was widely used. It’s a fine example of a genuine innovation.
