A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Atari
December 1982
Atari Star Raiders: New game, private property
This "advert", which appeared in the pre-Christmas edition of Personal Computer World and which encourages infringers to write to Graham Daubney - who would later become director ...

Atari
June 1987
Atari 520STM: To help you destroy the aliens, we've massacred the price
The Atari 520STM was fundamentally the same machine as the previous ST model, except that it came with a built-in TV modulator and had its OS and GEM graphics manager supplied in ...

Enterprise/Elan
April 1985
Instead of computers catching up with technology, technology now has to catch up with a computer
In the summer of 1982, one-time Olympic chess player and former chess grandmaster David Levy, of Intelligent Software - a company best known for producing programs like Cyrus IS C...

Kaypro
October 1984
Kaypro 2: The last word in portable micros
Built by Andrew Kay's Non-Linear Systems, with the motherboard designed by an out-sourced circuit-design consultant, and created as a direct competitor to the Osborne 1, the Kaypr...

Olivetti
December 1984
Olivetti - Compatibility plus!
Along with almost every major manufacturer of the time, Olivetti was not one to refuse a spot on the bandwagon that was the IBM PC format. Here, it's offering an 8086 "true 16 bi...

IBM
December 1984
On average, there is one new software package written for the IBM Personal Computer every day
IBM's original PC - the 5150 - had been the machine that spawned a whole new era of generic, dull and identi-kit computers which ended up trouncing everything that had gone before...

Acorn
February 1985
Ask an expert why the Electron's the best micro in its class
Another advert for the Acorn Electron, the cut-down version of the BBC Micro. In common with many other Electron adverts, it stresses the fact that it's mostly the same as the e...

Commodore
July 1985
All you need to do this, is this: The Commodore 128 and 64
Officially launched at the 1985 January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and built with the same case used for the late-model C64s, the Commodore 128 was the company's last ...

Cambridge Computer
November 1987
Z88: Buying a powerful personal computer is no longer a big issue. Or a big deal.
Clive Sinclair's company - Sinclair Research - had hit the buffers towards the end of 1985, and was sold - essentially for its name and merchandising rights - to brash new upstart...

Processor Technology
January 1977
Introducing Sol Systems - A complete computer/terminal concept
This advert - which was part of an impressive six-page spread - shows the Sol-20, a machine which first shipped only a month before in December 1976, as well as the impressive ran...

Metacomco
December 1986
Programming the 68000 by Metacomco
St Pauls, Bristol-based Metacomco had been quietly writing system software and compilers for the Motorola 68000 processor, and had also previously licenced its own 8086 BASIC inte...

Commodore
December 1986
Commodore Amiga - astounding by any stretch of the imagination
The Amiga, code-named "Lorraine", was first demonstrated to a select few at June 1984's CES show in Chicago, by Amiga, a company founded by Jay Miner, one of the original designer...

Morrow Designs
October 1982
Decision 1 - the only machine that runs almost everything
George Morrow - the founder of Morrow Designs - was born in 1934 and earned a degree in physics from Stanford before going on to do a master's in mathematics at the University of ...

Dell
July 1987
You'd better believe this... or you won't believe our prices
Michael Dell started out at the age of 13 selling mail-order stamps, and by the time he was at High School he was earning some $17,000 a year selling newspaper subscriptions with ...

Psion
October 1983
The best software on earth comes from Psion
Psion had been founded in 1980 by David Potter, who had been born in South Africa but who had moved to the UK to study science at Cambridge University. He went on to get a doctora...