70's computers

“Hang on — This Box *Talks*? And Costs More Than a Ford Cortina?”

Picture it: 1973. You’re in a school hall, linoleum squeaking under Clarks, the air thick with Bisto and existential dread. Then — whirrr-click-buzz — and there it sits: a beige metal cabinet with blinking red LEDs, like a robot having a panic attack. A teacher in a cardigan (slightly frayed at the cuffs) types something in *all caps* — no lowercase, mind — and after 47 seconds, the thing spits out: `HELLO. MY NAME IS ALICE.` You lean in. “Blimey. Does it make tea?” Nah, love — but it *does* calculate quadratic equations. Faster than Mr Jenkins, *and* without sighing. That, my friends, was the magic — and mild terror — of 70's computers: equal parts sci-fi dream and office appliance, humming away in basements, labs, and the odd progressive comprehensive like it owned the place. Spoiler: it sort of did.

Before the Bedroom Revolution: Mainframes, Minis, and “Do Not Touch” Signs

Let’s not kid ourselves — the early 70's computers weren’t exactly plug-and-play. The “personal” bit came *late* in the decade. Until then? Computers lived in *air-conditioned rooms*, behind glass, guarded by men with pocket protectors and zero sense of humour. IBM System/370 — the Rolls-Royce of its day — filled a room, gulped 20kW, and cost upwards of £750,000 (that’s £7.2m today — enough for a small castle *and* staff). Access? Via punch cards. One typo? Re-punch the *entire deck*. And if the hopper jammed? You’d hear a sharp intake of breath across three corridors. These weren’t tools — they were *oracles*. You queued. You waited. You brought biscuits for the operator. Respect was non-negotiable. And noise? Constant — like a fridge arguing with a Hoover.

The Minicomputer Moment: When “Small” Meant “Fits in a Wardrobe”

Then came the rebels: DEC’s PDP-11, Data General’s Nova — machines that didn’t need their own postcode. Still not “personal”, mind — but suddenly, *departments* could have one. Universities used them for physics sims; hospitals, for patient records; breweries (yes, *breweries*), for fermentation tracking. One chap in Burton-on-Trent told us: “We programmed the PDP-8 to alert us when the mash hit 68°C. Saved three batches a year — and one marriage.” The 70's computers minis weren’t flashy — green monochrome CRTs, toggle switches for booting (*yes, really*), storage on 8-inch floppy disks the size of dinner plates — but they were *accessible*. And fast. A PDP-11/45 could crunch payroll in 12 minutes. Revolutionary? In ’74? Bloody right.

1975: The Year Everything Changed (in a Garage in Los Altos)

Enter: the Altair 8800. Launched in January ’75 — not in a lab, but on the *cover of Popular Electronics*. A kit. £397 ($439). No keyboard. No screen. Just switches and LEDs. You “programmed” by flipping toggles — *up for 1, down for 0* — like Morse code with commitment issues. And yet? Orders flooded in. Why? Because for the first time, a *hobbyist* could own a computer. Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw it, dropped out of Harvard, and wrote BASIC for it — in *two months*, on paper, because they didn’t *have* an Altair. Legend. That machine — clunky, cryptic, glorious — proved 70's computers didn’t need to live in cathedrals. They could live in sheds. And sheds, it turned out, were where revolutions brewed.

1977: The Trinity — Apple II, PET, and TRS-80 Walk Into a Shop…

Boom. Three machines. One year. All *ready-built*. No soldering. Plug in, switch on, *go*. The Commodore PET — all-in-one, with a tiny chiclet keyboard and a 9-inch screen — looked like a toaster that gained sentience. The TRS-80 Model I (“Trash-80”, to fans) from Radio Shack: woodgrain veneer, cassette-tape storage, and a manual that *warned*: “Do not place near strong magnetic fields (e.g. loudspeakers, vacuum cleaners)”. And the Apple II — sleek, expandable, *colour* graphics (!), and that iconic beige wedge. Sold 2,435 units in Year 1. By ’79? Over 35,000. These weren’t just gadgets — they were *invitations*. “Come in,” they whispered. “Type `PRINT "HELLO"` — go on. We won’t bite.” (Much.) The 70's computers had finally arrived at the doorstep — and brought the future with them.

The 1977 “Big Three” — Specs & Soul (All Prices in GBP)

Note: £700 in 1977 = ~£4,800 today. A *steep* investment — but cheaper than a car, and infinitely more fun to explain to your nan. (“No, Gran — it’s not a telly. It’s… well. Imagine a very clever abacus.”) This was the heart of the 70's computers explosion: *democratisation*, one beige box at a time.

Storage Nightmares: Cassette Tapes, Floppies, and the Dreaded “?SYNTAX ERROR”

Backing up your *Space Invaders* clone? Pop in a C90 cassette. Press *Record* on the deck, type `SAVE "GAME"`, and pray the dog doesn’t bark, the kettle doesn’t whistle, or the neighbour doesn’t start *Bohemian Rhapsody*. Load it back? `LOAD "GAME"`, hit play — and wait. *And wait.* If the tone wobbled? `?LOAD ERROR.` Game over. Data gone. Tears shed. Floppies (5¼-inch, later) were faster — but *fragile*. Bend one? Data scrambled. Leave it on the radiator? Magnetised soup. One teacher in Essex kept a “Floppy Morgue” drawer — warped disks labelled “Gone to the great bit-bucket in the sky.” The 70's computers taught us patience — and the sacred art of the *backup copy*.

The Keyboard Wars: QWERTY vs. “Where’s the Quote Key?!”

Not all keys were created equal. The PET’s keyboard was *membrane* — silent, spongy, and utterly unresponsive if you had cold hands. The TRS-80? Mechanical, clicky — but half the keys doubled as BASIC commands (`↑` was *PRINT*, `▼` was *LIST*). Type too fast? It’d miss keystrokes — a phenomenon known as “keyboard bounce”. Apple II’s layout? Close to modern — but no *arrow keys*. You navigated with `I`, `J`, `K`, `L`. (“WASD? Never heard of her.”) And the *feel*? Heavy. Satisfying. Like tapping morse code into a tank. Every 70's computers keyboard had personality — some charming, some cursed — but all *memorable*. You didn’t just type — you *negotiated*.

Software: Hand-Copied Listings, Type-In Magazines, and the Birth of Shareware

No app stores. No downloads. Just… *paper*. Magazines like *Creative Computing* and *BYTE* ran 10-page program listings — hundreds of lines of `10 PRINT "HELLO" : 20 GOTO 10`. You’d type for *hours*, line by line, only to hit `RUN` and get `?SYNTAX ERROR IN 247`. Where’d you slip? A missing colon? A `0` instead of `O`? Back to line 1. Painful? Yes. Formative? Absolutely. Some even *traded* tapes at school — “I’ll give you *Lunar Lander* for *Hunt the Wumpus*”. And then — miracle — *VisiCalc* (1979), the first spreadsheet. Ran on Apple II. Businesses *bought* computers just for it. The 70's computers didn’t just compute — they *convinced* the world this was worth the hassle.

Top 5 Most-Published Type-In Programs (1975–1979)

• Star Trek (text-based) — appeared in 47 magazines
• Hamurabi (resource mgmt) — 39 appearances
• Adventure (Colossal Cave) — 28 (late ’79 only)
• Eliza (psychotherapist bot) — 22
• Lunar Lander — 19

Funny how *Star Trek* topped the list — proof that even in the age of core memory, we’d rather explore strange new worlds than balance the books. (Though *Hamurabi* came close — turns out ancient grain logistics *is* gripping.) The 70's computers weren’t just tools — they were *playgrounds*.

The Ghosts in the Machine: Legacy, Nostalgia, and Why We Still Care

Today’s phone has 100,000x the power of a 1977 Apple II. So why do we *ache* for those clunky boxes? Because they were *honest*. You saw the gears. You heard the fan. You *understood* the limits — and pushed them anyway. A kid in 1979 couldn’t code an app — but they *could* make a robot arm move with a relay and 12 lines of BASIC. There was no black box — just curiosity, a soldering iron, and sheer *grit*. The 70's computers weren’t about efficiency. They were about *agency*. And that — more than megahertz — is what changed everything.

Keep the Legacy Alive — From Archives to Interactive Timelines

Fancy hearing a PDP-11 boot up? Or reading the *original* Altair 8800 manual (with hand-drawn schematics)? Start at The Great War Archive — our digital vault holds 1,200+ scanned brochures, manuals, and magazine spreads from 1970–1979, fully searchable by model, year, or “how beige it is”. For deeper context, explore the History section — essays on the social impact of early computing, interviews with DEC engineers, and a surprisingly poignant piece on “The Day We Turned Off the Last Mainframe”. And if you’re itching to trace the Apple lineage — from garage to global giant — dive into the Apple Computers: History & Innovation Timeline, complete with rare photos of Woz’s breadboard prototypes. Because the story of 70's computers isn’t over — it’s just waiting for the next generation to press `RUN`.

References

• https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102658373-05-01-acc.pdf
• https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/computers-1970s
• https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/system370/
• https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/personal-computers/17/307