Today in Tech History

On this day, fifty years ago, the world of tech changed forever…

Today’s a milestone in tech history. On this day in 1964, the first commercial desktop computer was launched.

The Programma 101 was unveiled at the New York World’s Fair, and had a price tag of $3,200 – that’s roughly $24,000 in today’s money. It had been produced by Italian manufacturers Olivetti and invented by the engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto.

Looks-wise, the computer had a 37-button keyboard, a two-bulb display that flashed red and blue, and a printer that could print 30 characters a second.

The machine’s abilities were mainly mathematical. It could carry out detailed arithmetic operations. It had a few letters on its keyboard, but they were used for operations rather than word processing.

When it came to programming, magnetic cards, roughly the size of airline tickets, could be inserted into the computer, which could be programmed with up to 120 instructions at a time. These were the forefathers of floppy disks.

By today’s standards, the computer had a 240 byte memory, but memory wasn’t measured in megabytes or gigabytes back then. Instead, memory was measured in characters.

Before the Programma 101 was invented, members of the public who needed to use a computer would have had to book time to use a monolithic machine, which would be the size of an entire room.

The computer had no marketing material when it was launched at the World’s Fair. However, the following year, when mass production started on the machine, the PR train left the station. Users of the Programma 101 were shown working by the pool and in the bath.