A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts
In a private room at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in January 1977, Commodore showed the world's first complete "personal computer" - the PET 2001 - an "appliance" micro that for the first time could be taken out of the box, plugged in and used by regular people without a soldering iron.
Soon, Tandy and Apple joined in and the market grew steadily, but then Commodore and Sinclair launched cheap home computers in the early 80s that changed everything.
The market exploded from tens of thousands of machines a year to millions, as famous 1970s names like Cromemco, IMSAI, Nascom and MITS were pushed aside. Micro companies were suddenly worth $1 billion dollars and their employees were millionaires. Hundreds of companies launched hundreds of incompatible machines. Price wars were started, old scores were settled and companies were destroyed.
Eight bits made way for 16 and 32 in the space of a few years. For a while Britain led the world in manufacture and adoption, with 80% of all computers sold in Europe being sold in the UK.
The fate of many microcomputer companies. From a Business Operating Software advert in Personal Computer World, June 1986.
Then the 8-bit market reached saturation and more companies imploded - Sinclair was sold for its name and assets only, Acorn almost didn't make it and a raft of also-rans fell by the wayside - Camputers, Dragon Data, Elan, Oric and Jupiter Cantab to name but a few. Even big names like Timex and Texas Instruments were burned.
Meanwhile, the sleeping giant that was IBM launched its 5150 at the end of 1981 and watched as it slowly but inevitably over the next few years became the standard. Other companies cloned it, copied and improved it and soon the only game in town was the IBM PC.
From the latter half of the 1980s, every micro company and its dog was building generic beige boxes, and people wanted the same beige boxes at home and work. The home computer as a concept was dead, and the "wonder years" were over.
This collection of over 300 adverts attempts to tell something of that story...
Acorn
March 1979
Introducing Acorn: A professional MPU card
This is probably Acorn's very first advert - it does indeed say "introducing Acorn" - and appeared just a few months after the company's founding as Cambridge Processor Unit (CPU) in November 1978. The...
Tandberg
July 1980
Learning to be patient isn't part of the syllabus
Nearly one and a half years before Acorn launched its BBC Micro and ultimately sewed up the UK's educational market for microcomputers comes this advert for Tandberg's TDV-2114, known as the EC10 - or...
Rostronics
July 1980
The Electronic Office: Rostronics introduces System Z
Rostronics, of Wandsworth High Street in London, had been supplying printers, books, software, its own memory kits for the TRS-80, Apple II and the Exidy Sorceror, and 8" floppy disk drives for both the...
Tangerine
July 1980
Microtan 65: a 6502-based computer
Just a few months before Microtan went through another of its various ownership changes comes this advert for its Microtan 65, on a background as orange as the company's name. The basic Microtan 65 ran...
Strumtech/SEED
March 1981
SEED Microcomputer Products: System One
It seemed almost inevitable for companies that started out as importers of mostly-American microcomputers or components that they would end up building their "own" micro. And so, along with companies...
Nascom/Lucas
April 1980
System 80: We've put together a total system... so you can take it apart
Although other companies had offered cases for, or had even sold ready-cased versions of Nascom's existing model 1 or 2 single-board micros, the System 80 was Nascom's first attempt at offering its own...
Sinclair
December 1974
The Sinclair Cambridge - no other calculator is so powerful and so compact
It's not uncommon for adverts for microcomputers or electronics - especially early on - to look somewhat "hand made", but this would win an award, if there was one, for the most poorly laid out, looking...
Butel-Comco
July 1980
The desktop computer that thinks it's a mainframe
It's a stretch to put a desktop Z80-based microcomputer into the same category as a room-sized mainframe catering for sometimes hundreds of users, but here it is in this early - possibly first - advert...
Ferguson
March 1981
The incredible Bigboard single-board computer
Launched in 1980, the Bigboard was one of a number of single-board computers - bare boards that shipped with everything needed to run a microcomputer, but which didn't however come with a case, a power...
Micro Craft
January 1985
While other people have been telling you tall stories - we've come up with a tall order
Imported and distributed in the UK by Tashkl Computer Systems of Wembley, Middlesex, the Dimension 68000 was built by Micro Craft Corporation of Texas in the US - a company founded by Mike Carpenter specifically...
ACT/Apricot
January 1985
Has Apricot gone bananas?
Launched in 1984, ACT's Apricot F1 was a follow-up to 1983's Apricot PC - a machine which featured compatibility with Chuck Peddle's Sirius 1, which ACT had a lot success with as an importer, shifting...
Morrow Designs
February 1983
How much? The Micro Decision for £1,095
George Morrow had started making products for microcomputers in 1976, having joined the influential Homebrew Computer Club which had formed in the wake of the launch of the Altair 8800 at the very beginning...
Sirton
June 1982
Sirton: the specialists in S-100 systems
Sirton Computer Systems was established in 1979 by electronics engineer Lionel Moon as an S-100 systems specialist, stocking - according to the advert - over fifty different S-100 cards from the usual...
Videcom
February 1983
The Big Screen micro from KGB at under £1,800 is the best buy around!
Videcom had been formed in 1972 as a manufacturer of terminals, and along the way had carved itself a niche in the transport industry, in particular for airports, where it produced a range of products...
IMP
February 1983
British-made 68000 CPU and 256K Dynamic RAM cards for the S-100 bus
This advert, from Integrated Micro Products of Consett, in County Durham, is notable for a couple of things. Firstly, 1983 is the year that the old 1975 Altair Bus standard, which rapidly became known...