History of Computers part 8 BBC Documentary.mp4

[Music] for technical hobbyists it was a dream come true now they could have their own [Music] computer clubs of enthusiasts grew up all over America like the home brew Computer Club in San Francisco where members showed off what they'd got there home home brewed computers to [Music] do from these modest Beginnings came a series of startup companies selling parts for the AL and soon whole computers by 1976 there were enough of them to hold a convention in Atlantic [Music] City off in a corner of the convention hall were a group of scruffy looking individuals selling

circuit boards two of them would become synonymous with the personal computer Steve Jobs and Steven wnc as teenagers growing up in Silicon Valley jobs and wnac had developed reputations as high-tech franksters all too eager to thumb their noses at Authority W and I had known each other since I was about 12 or 13 years old and our first project together was we built these little blue boxes to uh make free telephone calls and we had the best blue box in the world it was this all digital little blue box I don't think it works anymore

so uh but uh we had a we had a fun time doing that so when it came to building a computer together was was the brilliant Hardware engineer and focused on the core design of the computer and uh I was worrying about which parts we ought to use and how we were going to build these things and how a sort of somebody that wasn't a was was going to manage to buy all the extra parts you still needed to buy and plug this thing together so I was I was not designing a computer with any

idea wouldd ever start a company ever have a product ever be successful it was just to go down to the club and show off and to own and use Steve saw the interest and he started coming up with ideas right away how this thing could be turned into product how it could be marketed the two Steves however knew little about running a business their Ambitions might have come to nothing had they not decided to go to Mike Mara and ask for help Mara was a retired Intel executive who liked helping young entrepreneurs when he saw

the computer they were building the apple he was entranced and I looked at it and I said this is the first affordable useful computer for people uh and the two guys really didn't have the background an experience to to start a company and and make it successful so I agreed to help [Music] them what happened next is the stuff of Legend the story of jobs and wnc and the rise of Apple computer is the American dream RIT large for the seeds the hobbyists had planted grew quickly into a huge microcomputer industry contrary to the expectations

of the corporate establishment people did apparently want to own their own computers although it wasn't clear exactly why they wanted them some used them for games and later scientific and business uses were found but whatever the reason people seemed to want to own them while many of the startup companies folded in this turbulent Market under Mara's careful management Apple prosper becoming the fastest growing company in history jobs wnc and Mara became Rich beyond their dreams each ended up with more than $100 million the computer once an expensive room-sized machine was now coming off the assembly

line by the Thousand an idea which a decade before would have sounded like science fiction good evening I'd like to welcome you all to the hobby Computer Club I noticed there are a number of faces here that we haven't seen before Britain too had its hobbyists from every Walk of Life all passionate about computers the potential of the market appealed to one of Britain's more unconventional inventors well it was a new market which was dominated by the Americans and were clearly if the cost could be reduced substantially the the market could be expanded Clive Sinclair

was well known for a succession of cheap miniaturized electronic gadgets from Tiny televisions to pocket calculators in 1980 Sinclair launched his first computer it could be bought for £100 less if purchased as a kit and it plugged into any television programs were sold on cassettes playable by Cheap cassette recorder Sinclair's computers took over most of the British market and for a short time even in America he was selling more machines than the three Market leaders put together they turned up everywhere there's a large number of people applying them in all sorts of ways that unsuspected

I got into London taxi the other day had one of our computers built in and he could you gave him any destination he could tap it in and tell you what the costed it all the time that newcomers like Sinclair and apple had been building the new personal computer industry IBM the industry giant had been sitting on the sidelines watching at first they weren't sure how to respond to this strange New Market and when they did make a half-hearted attempt to enter the field they failed IBM put out a personal computer in 1975 people don't

know this because they don't talk about it very much the 5100 they called it the portable computer it weighed 30 lb it was big as a bread box had a 5in screen could cost $5,000 just to open the box and $9,000 if you wanted it to really do anything they were selling this at the second West Coast computer Fair all dressed up in nice little IBM suits and they weren't doing much business the guy next door to them who had a propeller beanie on uh total freak named L Marl was doing land Office business selling

his discs of what's It software as it was called a little database program and perhaps they learned something from that today a new IBM computer has reached a personal scale a person can afford it a person can put it anywhere office in 1981 IBM saw the light and introduced a serious personal computer soon they dominated the market that others had created despite the astonishing growth of the micro computer industry there were problems computers were now small and affordable but they were still infuriatingly difficult to use if you can't get a computer to do anything but

frustrate you [Applause] if you're having a hard time understanding [Applause] computers what the PC Revolution needed had been invented a decade before at Xerox Park software which made a computer easy enough for a child to use Xerox had failed to commercialize its great discoveries it would be up to someone else to deliver the park Vision to the world that person was Steve Jobs one day in 1979 he visited the Laboratories at Park and he was astonished at what he saw and it was just instantly obvious to anyone that this was the way things should be

um and so I remember coming back to Apple thinking our our future is just changed this is where we have to go the vision of Xerox park now became Steve Jobs Vision as well his challenge was to build a computer which was not only cheap and small but so intuitive a child could use it such a computer might not only change the course of computing but prevent the mighty IBM from dominating the PC industry the launch date for his new product the Macintosh was January 1984 and in an impassioned speech to his salesman jobs couldn't

resist invoking the name of George Orwell it is now 198 84 it appears IBM wants it all IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to Industry control Apple will big blue dominate the entire computer industry the entire Information Age was George Orwell wri about 19 84