A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts

Atari: There's No Comparing It With Any Other Video Game

It's another advert for the legendary Atari 2600 "Woody" games console, launched four years before in 1977 - when it was known as the Atari VCS - and still doing well in 1981. The advert shows a nice...

The First Honest-to-Goodness Full Color Computer - William Shatner

The US counterpart to Ronnie Barker, who had been pressed in to service advertising Commodore PETs in the UK with his trademark punnery and word-play, was none other than William "Captain Kirk" Shatner,...

Atari 800: Personal Computer Systems

Released in 1979, the Atari 800 was originally designed as the better of two models, the other being the Atari 400. The 400 and 800 model numbers originally denoted the expected amount of memory that...

Get to Know Cortex - the Really Very Friendly Computer

This is an interesting advert for a forgotten machine - The Cortex - built by C/WP (Computers/Word Processors) of the UK from a design bought from Ontel in the US. In the US this machine was known as...

You're Never Alone With A Commodore PET

In the year that the VIC-20 would be released comes an advert - very much a contemporary of the similar Primeval Swamp - for the Commodore PET, or rather not for any particular PET but for the support...

Mass Data Storage from less than £1,000

Keeping up with a tradition almost as old as advertising itself, the price shown isn't quite the price you pay as it doesn't include VAT or shipping, but it's still interesting that the magic number of...

The BBC Microcomputer System: The Shape of Things to Come

From this attractive A3 sales brochure is the quote "Amongst the shifting sands of computer technology the BBC Microcomputer is here to stay". And it was, in its various guises, until 1994 at least,...

The Epson HX-20: for Business on the Move

Considered to be the world's first true mobile computer, the HX-20 came from a company better known for the printers which it had been producing for 20 years. The HX-20 was first announced in 1981 but...

The Atari Video Computer System from Ingersoll

This advert for the Granddaddy of the modern video game - The Atari VCS (Video Computer System), or 2600 - comes in the form of a gate-fold brochure containing a colourful list of 40 or so game cartridges,...