A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

SWTPC: Need hardcopy? How about pictures?

This is an early advert from SWTPC, the San Antonio, Texas, company that had been founded in 1967 out of the earlier Daniel E Meyer Company business that specialised in selling el...

Buy Nascom 2 Now and get a free 16K RAM board

The Nascom 2 was one of a range of kits produced by UK computer manufacturer Nascom, a company founded by John Marshall and Kerr Borland. The previous model, the Nascom 1, had b...

Now. The Perfect Microcomputer: Vector 1 - it's a two-touch affair

Founded in November 1976, it didn't take long for Vector Graphic to go from making 8K memory cards to complete systems, as shown by this advert from July 1977. The Vector 1 was the...

The Alpha Micro Computer: Multi-user, Multi-tasking, Timesharing, Memory Management

The Alpha Micro is unusual in that it appears to be the only computer that ever shipped with a Western Digital WD16 16-bit processor as its main CPU. Western Digital had started ...

Vector Graphic Inc.: Assembled! Tested! The same 8K static memory for the same price!

This is an early advert for Vector Graphic, the company formed in 1976 by two housewives - Lore Harp and Carole Ely. The husband of the former, Bob Harp, had been selling similar 8...

Commodore CDTV - it's nothing short of revolutionary

Launched in March 1991, Commodore's CDTV - not Compact Disc TeleVision, but actually Commodore Dynamic Total Vision - was one of the very first consumer systems to provide video ...

Almarc: Specialists in Vector Graphic

Vector Graphic was an American company set up in 1976 by husband-and-wife team Robert and Lore Harp. Vector's machines were distributed in the UK by Almarc Data Systems, a compa...

Miracle Technology WS2000 Modem: Ace Down The Line

The last time a modem was advertised as a thing in its own right was probably towards the end of the 1990s, when the pinacle of dial-up - the 56K modem - came out. Before then, ...

Transam: The Exciting New Triton Personal Computer

The Transam Triton was a British-built Intel 8080A-based kit computer that was first released in December 1978. Somewhat uniquely, it offered different levels of firmware with a...

Three Trumps from Acorn: The Acorn Microcomputer

Acorn was founded as Cambridge Processor Unit (CPU) in November 1978 by Hermann Hauser, who had moved to the UK from Vienna at the age of 15, and Chris Curry - a former Science of...

Heathkit - Britain's Most Popular Kits

Heathkit was an American company that was originally founded in 1912 as the E. B. Heath Aerial Vehicle Company, an aircraft manufacturer, based in Chicago. This gives Heathkit ...

Sinclair Project 60 and the Micromatic Transistor Radio

Here is an advert from the company, or at least the Sinclair Radionics part of it, that would go on to launch the ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, and in doing so change the UK compute...

Commodore 64: The World's Best-Selling Computer Now Comes ... With a Mouse

The first trackball pointing device had been invented way back in 1941 by Ralph Benjamin as part of British Royal Navy project, but the computer mouse is generally credited to Dou...

Fortune 32:16 - Minicomputer Performance at Microcomputer Price

Based in San Carlos, California, Fortune was founded as a start-up in October 1981 with $8.5 million dollars which, at about £32 million in 2025 terms, was possibly the largest se...

Transtec: If you can buy a business computer package at a lower price, I'll buy it for you

So says Noel C. May, the managing director of Transtec Computers in one of those advertising claims that would be great to know how often had to be fulfilled. The machine, know...