A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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 Douglas Engelbart and Bill...

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 [[6|1981]] million in [[now]] terms, was possibly the largest seed investment...

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, known as the "BC2", was a...

Colour Genie Does It All!

The EG2000, or Colour Genie, was released at about the same time as EACA International's update to its original 1981 monster computer, the Video Genie. By now known as the Genie I (with built-in tape)...

Toshiba T-200: Reliable hardware is not enough

Long before Toshiba had the "Hello Tosh, Got a Toshiba?" line with its laptops and a couple of years before it joined the Microsoft-backed MSX attempt to set a new standard in hardware comes this advert...

Camputers Lynx: How to increase the size of your memory

Camputers was formed in the winter of 1981 as Camtronic Circuits - a spin-off from GW Design Services, a company that had already provided PCB design services to Acorn for the Proton, aka BBC Micro. ...

Victor 9000 - The All-Conquering Business System

Lightning and sensitive electronics is always such a great combination, and it's used to the max in this advert for the Victor 9000, a machine which was meant to have been a US-only version of the Sirius...

British Micro: Now Other Micros Are Less Than Perfect

At first sight this is another obscure entry in the who/what/where department, however British Micro was connected to the more famous Nascom and Gemini Microcomputer, both founded by John Marshall. The...

Microsoft: MS-DOS gives you the only complete set of tools for 16-bit systems

If there was once company that, for good or bad, has influenced the early home and business computer industry more than any other, it has to be Microsoft. Formed in 1975 in Alberquerque, New Mexico,...

Hewlett-Packard Calculators - The First Family

The first half of the 1970s was something of a boom time for calculator manufacturers, a situation triggered by the arrival of the first "calculator on a chip" integrated circuits in 1971, first from...

Climax 60: If you know what's good for you - you'll take our PICK

If choice of operating system is anything to go by, then this particular machine is fairly unusual. It features Pick - a multi-user multivalued database system which, whilst not a pure operating system...

Processor Technology: New 16K RAM Fully Assembled

More bits per buck than ever before on a fully burned-in and tested board unconditionally guaranteed for one year, says the advert about what is apparently a breakthrough price for a whole 16 kilobytes...

Three Atari Video Computer Systems Must Be Won!

Here's a nice competition advert which featured in a March or April edition of the comic 2000AD, and which offered the chance to win one of three Atari VCS2600 (sometimes known as "Woody") game consoles,...

Exidy: Announcing the new Sorcerer

The Sorcerer, launched in 1978, was originally manufactured by Exidy of Sunnyvale, California, but was cancelled in 1979. It was however popular enough in Europe and ended up being built under licence...

Weetabix: 100 Dragon Home Computer Sets to be Won!!

In the year that Dragon Data went in to receivership comes this "proxy" advert from Weetabix, in what would have been quite a good prize bundle at the time. Each of the 100 sets that Weetabix was giving...