RAIR Advert - November 1978

This is probably the first advert to feature RAIR's Black Box - a microcomputer that managed to survive until at least 1983 and which became popular as an OEM machine, cropping up with Ryman and Innsite badges on, and most famously as the ICL Personal Computer, or ICL PC1.

RAIR - by name and by nature - was a company that appeared to start out primarily as a time-share consultancy and a supplier of terminals and other peripherals, like printers and disk units. However, as this advert shows it had also launched its Black Box micro early on in its history.

The first mention of it in the UK seems to be in September 1978's Personal Computer World, where it was reported that the company was "moving into the expanding field of microcomputers with its new RAIR Black Box microcomputer". RAIR itself was reported to have said:

"RAIR sees the microcomputer industry as having a dramatic impact on the computer market. With complete systems available under £2,000 (£14,900 in 2024), few businesses will be unable to take advantage of the power of their own stand-alone microcomputer; and will have the opportunity to consider many new applications for cost-effective computerisation^[1]".

The Black Box was a multi-user system capable of supporting up to four users, each on their own dumb terminal.

It was first introduced in the US, at the National Computer Conference in Anaheim, California, in the week of June 5th 1978, as part of a joint venture between the British Overseas Trade Board and the Business Equipment Trade Association^[2].

It used Intel's 8085 CPU - apparently making RAIR one of the very first companies in the UK to do so^[3] - which was a version of the earlier 8080 that was not only faster but required only a single 5V power supply^[4], making it easier and cheaper to build around.

There's no price on the advert, but as it came with 64K memory - a reasonable amount at the time - and a generous selection of software, including BASIC, Fortran IV and COBOL, it was probably expensive. Oh, and it was possible to lease or rent one, which is always a give-away that something's not exactly cheap.

The later Model 3 retailed from £1,950 right up to £7,250^[5] - that's an impressive £54,300 in 2024.