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Home Computers 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation
A celebration of the early years of the digital revolution, when computing power was deployed in a beige box on your desk.
Today, people carry powerful computers in our pockets and call them "phones." A generation ago, people were amazed that the processing power of a mainframe computer could be contained in a beige box on a desk. This book is a celebration of those early home computers, with specially commissioned new photographs of 100 vintage computers and a generous selection of print advertising, product packaging, and instruction manuals. Readers can recapture the glory days of fondly remembered (or happily forgotten) machines including the Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple Lisa, and Mattel Aquarius--traces of the techno-utopianism of the not-so-distant past.
Home Computers showcases mass-market success stories, rarities, prototypes, one-offs, and never-before-seen specimens. The heart of the book is a series of artful photographs that capture idiosyncratic details of switches and plugs, early user-interface designs, logos, and labels. After a general scene-setting retrospective, the book proceeds computer by computer, with images of each device accompanied by a short history of the machine, its inventors, its innovations, and its influence. Readers who inhabit today's always-on, networked, inescapably connected world will be charmed by this visit to an era when the digital revolution could be powered down every evening.
Today, people carry powerful computers in our pockets and call them "phones." A generation ago, people were amazed that the processing power of a mainframe computer could be contained in a beige box on a desk. This book is a celebration of those early home computers, with specially commissioned new photographs of 100 vintage computers and a generous selection of print advertising, product packaging, and instruction manuals. Readers can recapture the glory days of fondly remembered (or happily forgotten) machines including the Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple Lisa, and Mattel Aquarius--traces of the techno-utopianism of the not-so-distant past.
Home Computers showcases mass-market success stories, rarities, prototypes, one-offs, and never-before-seen specimens. The heart of the book is a series of artful photographs that capture idiosyncratic details of switches and plugs, early user-interface designs, logos, and labels. After a general scene-setting retrospective, the book proceeds computer by computer, with images of each device accompanied by a short history of the machine, its inventors, its innovations, and its influence. Readers who inhabit today's always-on, networked, inescapably connected world will be charmed by this visit to an era when the digital revolution could be powered down every evening.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 14, 2022
Oh dear! This is so full of errors it is unbelievable,for the BBC model A they have used photos of a BBC model B, the Epson HX20 (the first laptop) is ignored. Enough spelling errors to make one sCREAm in frustration. Oh and the photography is very bad on a large number of pages.
Overall a poorly edited tome that could have been so much more.
Overall a poorly edited tome that could have been so much more.
November 23, 2021
I love computers and the history of them, but I thought this book was a missed opportunity. I felt the photography was good, but sometimes confusingly cropped. Sometimes, I felt like they should have went in a bit more detail about the computers. The 90's were trimmed over, as if the ThinkPad and the PowerBook never existed. And don't get me started on the full color pages. 6.5/1o
May 14, 2021
If you had a ZX Spectrum, you'll know...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews