A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

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 company initially based in...

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, there was still a bit...

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 Cambridge, a.k.a. Sinclair...

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 one of the more ancient...

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 computer industry. Sinclair...

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...