personal computers were first sold to the public in 1976.
when were personal computers first sold to the public?
1976
nec has developed mainframes since 1950s. in 1976, the company had the 4th largest mainframes sales (10.4%) in japan, after ibm (29.6%), fujitsu (20.1%) and hitachi (15.8%). nec didn't have a presence in the consumer market, and its subsidiary, new nippon electric (later nec home electronics), had limited success in consumer products. however, the electronic device sales division developed the microprocessor evaluation kit tk-80, and it became unexpectedly popular among hobbyists. , a developer of the tk-80, watched the rise of personal computers at the 1977 west coast computer faire. computer manufacturers had not developed personal computers because they assumed microprocessors were not suitable for computing as lack of performance and reliability. the division decided to develop a personal computer despite the information processing group who developed mainframes criticized that they were making toys. the division only had a small distribution network of electronic parts stores, so they asked new nippon electric to sell personal computers through their consumer distributions.
pc-9800 series
first produced in 1965, the programma 101 was a printing programmable calculator described in advertisements as a "desktop computer". it was designed and produced by the italian company olivetti with pier giorgio perotto being the lead developer. the olivetti programma 101 was presented at the 1965 new york world's fair after 2 years work (1962- 1964). over 44,000 units were sold worldwide; in the us its cost at launch was $3,200. it was targeted to offices and scientific entities for their daily work because of its high computing capabilities in small space and cost; also the nasa was amongst the first owners. built without integrated circuits or microprocessors, it used only transistors, resistors and condensers for its processing, the programma 101 had features found in modern personal computers, such as memory, keyboard, printing unit, magnetic card reader/recorder, control and arithmetic unit. hp later copied the programma 101 architecture for its hp9100 series.
history of personal computers