The history of the personal computer in TV commercials

Filed under: Hardware, Retrocomputing

When the computer takes a big step forward, I always like to take a look back. We can argue all day over whether Microsoft Windows Vista (win your copy from Download Squad here!) is revolutionary, evolutionary or just marketing hype. With around half a billion Dollars being spent on Vista's marketing launch I'd personally lean towards the latter of the three but, it does make me think... What about the marketing for the computers of our past, when home computers promised, as Atari once put it, "A World Beyond Your Wildest Dreams"?

The earliest "home computers required skills far beyond what today's most hands-on computer enthusiasts need to master. The earliest promise of computing at home came from an obscure company called MITS, in the form of the Altair. A DIY, soldering iron and lots of patience required, read output off the LEDs on the front panel, hope you took computer science classes kind of hobby machine, we owe the Altair one major thing; Microsoft. Founded around the BASIC language interpreter Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote for the fledgling machine, "Micro-Soft" wouldn't be the company we know today without the Altair 8800. In 1977 MITS started selling the Altair as a pre-assembled computer, removing the giant barrier to entry that was assembling the beast from scratch in your basement and creating the personal computer market as we know it.

Of course, it wasn't until the 1980s that the personal computer got a real marketing department. Atari, Apple, Commodore and IBM all duked-it-out in 30 second increments during the early 1980s with ads like these.

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The history of the personal computer in TV commercials originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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