A history of the microcomputer industry in 300 adverts
In a private room at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in January 1977, Commodore showed the world's first complete "personal computer" - the PET 2001 - an "appliance" micro that for the first time could be taken out of the box, plugged in and used by regular people without a soldering iron.
Soon, Tandy and Apple joined in and the market grew steadily, but then Commodore and Sinclair launched cheap home computers in the early 80s that changed everything.
The market exploded from tens of thousands of machines a year to millions, as famous 1970s names like Cromemco, IMSAI, Nascom and MITS were swept away. Micro companies were suddenly worth $1 billion dollars and their employees were millionaires. Hundreds of companies launched hundreds of incompatible machines. Price wars were started, old scores were settled and companies were destroyed.
Eight bits made way for 16 and 32 in the space of a few years. For a while Britain led the world in manufacture and adoption, with 80% of all computers sold in Europe being sold in the UK.
The fate of many microcomputer companies. From a Business Operating Software advert in Personal Computer World, June 1986.
Then the 8-bit market reached saturation and more companies imploded - Sinclair was sold for its name and assets only, Acorn almost didn't make it and a raft of also-rans fell by the wayside - Camputers, Dragon Data, Elan, Oric and Jupiter Cantab to name but a few. Even big names like Timex and Texas Instruments were burned.
Meanwhile, the sleeping giant that was IBM launched its 5150 at the end of 1981 and watched as it slowly but inevitably over the next few years became the standard. Other companies cloned it, copied and improved it and soon the only game in town was the IBM PC.
From the latter half of the 1980s, every micro company and its dog was building generic beige boxes. The "wonder years" were over.
This collection of over 300 adverts attempts to tell something of that story...
Memotech
December 1985
Memotech Personal Computer
Thanks to the lead-time involved in placing adverts in a monthly magazine, which seemed to be around six to eight weeks, Memotech had already gone bust, or was on the cusp of it, ...
IBM
November 1987
Frank Slater knew all about cleaning, but it took IBM to help him tidy up his accounts
Here's another advert for IBM's PS/2, or rather it isn't as such as whilst it features a PS/2 in the office photo, it is - in common with a lot of IBM's adverts - more about the c...
Sharp
September 1984
Don't worry. He's on your side
Sharp's MZ-700 was essentially a colour version of the venerable MZ-80K, which had been around since 1979. It was also the first Sharp micro to be launched without a built-in moni...
Soroc
September 1978
The Soroc IQ120
Soroc was founded in Anaheim, California, in 1975 by five ex-employees of Lear Siegler Incorporated (LSI), another terminal manufacturer. Various sources suggest that the company...
ECD
August 1977
Key into Maxi-power @ Micro-price
ECD was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in November 1974. Its first products were a capacitance meter and an industrial digital thermometer, both of which sold well. At the ...
RAIR
August 1980
Discover the secrets of the RAIR Black Box
It's an enigmatic advert from an enigmatic company - RAIR - for its original Black Box microcomputer. It looks to be in almost Cadbury branding, and in keeping with the chocolat...
Vector Graphic
March 1978
When you get right down to it, nobody does it better
Carly Simon might disagree that "nobody does it better", but here's a nice advert from Vector Graphic for a whole range of its S-100 boards. The boards include a Z-80 board for $...
Asda
10th November 1983
Asda price - for every Tom, Dick and Einstein
Asda - the UK supermarket chain founded in 1965 whose name is a contraction of ASquith and DAiries - is clearly not a microcomputer company, or even any sort of computer company w...
Zenith Data Systems
August 1980
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...
Apple
8th December 1983
Now we've removed the biggest obstacle between you and the famous Apple IIe
This is a curious and apparently one-off advert from Apple positioning the Apple IIe as part of a Professional Home Computer Package. It's also possibly the only Apple advert that...
Epson
July 1988
The 3 best takeaways of all time
Here's an amusing advert from Epson for its "PC Portable", otherwise known as the Q150A, which was launched at the beginning of 1988 - with the hard-disk version being launched in...
Amstrad
March 1987
How much computer can you buy for £450?
It's another advert for Amstrad's PC 1512, this time featuring a nice bit of analogue Photoshopping showing competitors' micros chopped up to represent how much you could get for ...
Intertec
October 1982
SuperBrain II: Summa Cum Laude!
This advert appears to be about the only one that Intertec ever did itself that actually features its SuperBrain micro, which was fairly omnipresent from its launch in 1979 and fo...
TeleVideo
August 1986
Introducing the TeleCAT-286. AT performance for £2695 complete.
TeleVideo - the terminals company founded in San Jose, California, in 1975 - was one of relatively few companies from that era which survived through the era of the IBM PC and bey...
TeleVideo
May 1982
To become the leader in terminals, Televideo had to give you more
TeleVideo was one of several companies - like Intertec - that had started out as terminal manufacturers, in its case in 1975. However unlike most other manufacturers from the 197...