The 1960's were an important time for electronics and computers. Many advances were occurring and new ground was being broken daily. One of the leading companies, that is still going strong today, was Hewlett-Packard. In 1969 Hewlett-Packard introduced the 9100A. Some called this a personal-computer while others called it a calculator. Regardless of these names, it was one of the smallest, cheapest, and most powerful machines ever created. As I progress in my career as an Information Technology professional I owe much to these early innovations and triumphs.
In the early 1960's computers were still very large and expensive. This led to them not having a place within the general public; instead, these computers resided only in large businesses, government centers, and universities. Some of these computers included Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-1, which sold for $120,000 and was the size of a small room, and the Laboratory Instrumentation Computer, which was sold for over $40,000 and was considered the world's first minicomputer, being about the size of a coffee table (Computer History, pg. 1).
At this time, Tom Osborne was unemployed and working on building what would become the prototype to the HP 9100A. He had been employed at Smith-Corona Marchant, a manufacturer of mechanical rotary calculators, but had quit after being frustrated with their efforts to create an electronic calculator. Osborne quickly starting creating a calculator that was superior in every way to what was currently being used. There were many reasons for this. One example is that he used the much faster Random Access Memory instead of Delay Line Memory, which everyone else was using. In Delay Line Memory, data is consistently being sent back and forth in the form of pulses and therefore is not always readily available (Vanhemert, pg. 1), while RAM, on the other hand, can be directly accessed. "The savings in power and size came from good engineering" (Liebson, pg. 1).
In 1964, Osborne finished his calculator. He then started trying to sell his calculator to a manufacturer, but while getting many job offers, he could not find a buyer. Then in 1965, Hewlett-Packard met with Osborne and decided to both hire him and create a calculator using his prototype. While at HP, Osborne's project ran into many more obstacles. One issue was that while designing the printed-circuit ROM, Osborne realized he would need the circuit lines to have a 15 mil line width, but the thinnest at the time was a 50 mil line width. HP engineers were able to come through for Osborne and redefine printed-circuit Rom by meeting these needs. In March 1968, the HP 9100A was finished and was introduced to the public in 1969. It cost just under $4,000. (Leibson, pg. 1)
Advances in computers and calculators would continue. They would become faster, smaller, more powerful, and cheaper, but the HP 9100A marked a very important milestone. Computers would no longer be just for large corporations and organizations. The general public could start to afford them and use them in an unprecedented way. This led to an information age where computers were involved in almost every industry and aspect of life. Before, it had taken considerable training to use a computer, and therefore very few people knew how. Now, people use it in their everyday life and are comfortable at a young age using a computer. This means many industries and jobs can use computers and expect their staff to be proficient in them without training.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")