Zenith Data Systems Advert - August 1980
From Practical Computing
The profesionals - Zenith Data Systems
Only months after Zenith had purchased the Heath Company from Schlumberger - forming Zenith Data System - comes this advert for a terminal and two micros.
Actually, the Z89 micro is essentially the Z19 "intelligent terminal", available for £735 + VAT, or around £4,800 in 2024, with a floppy disk drive, 48K of memory and two Z80 CPUs crammed in - a method of building a computer that was quite common amongst terminal manufacturers.
Also shown is the Z11A 16-bit computer - a Zenith-rebranded version of Heathkit's H11, which was itself a licenced clone of DEC's famous PDP-11 built into a single chip - in this case the updated KD11-HA, also known as the LSI-11/2.
This retailed for a hefty £4,359, or about £28,400 in 2024. That's more expensive than DEC's original LSI-11-based "PDP on a desktop" - the PDP-11/03, which sold for $3,000 in 1975[1], or around £23,300 now.
The advert also mentions "software engineer" - a phrase coined in the early 1960s by Margaret Hamilton, a systems engineer on the Apollo space program. Despite the age of the term, its use in 1980 still wasn't that common, with perhaps "programmer" being the more popular form.
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.
