RAIR Advert - November 1978
From Practical Computing
The British Micro: RAIR Black Box Microcomputer
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 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 Black Box was a multi-user system capable of supporting up to four users, each on their own dumb terminal. It was introduced 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[1].
It used Intel's 8085 CPU - apparently making RAIR one of the very first companies in the UK to do so[2] - which was a version of the earlier 8080 that was not only faster but required only a single 5V power supply[3], 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[4] - that's an impressive £50,600 in 2024.
Date created: 08 October 2024
Last updated: 12 October 2024
Sources
Text and otherwise-uncredited photos © nosher.net 2024. Dollar/GBP conversions, where used, assume $1.50 to £1. "Now" prices are calculated dynamically using average RPI per year.