Did you know that the personal computer was invented right here in King County? That's what I just learned from an ad from King County executive candidate Larry Phillips. He didn't explain how he came to that conclusion, but I would guess that Phillips thinks that Bill Gates and Paul Allen invented the personal computer.
Phillips is running as the candidate who really understands the county and the issues.
Usually TV ads are checked before they are aired, so Phillips' staff must be as misinformed as he is.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(Who did invent the personal computer? There are a number of plausible candidates. Those interested in the question might want to start with the Altair — and work back.)
Posted by Jim Miller at August 17, 2009 07:22 AM | Email ThisBut he has said that, in at least one of his commercials, according to Danny Westneat.
In Phillips' world, for example, King County is so white-hot on fire we all need sunglasses. His ads include this delusional optimism: "This is King County," he says, striding past a light-rail train. "We build transit on time and under budget." (Ding, ding, says the cheerful train.)Posted by: Jim Miller on August 17, 2009 08:43 AMI'm in the tank for light rail as much as anyone. But we were supposed to get nearly twice this system three years ago for three-fourths the cost.
You didn't even mention the part where he's walking by the Sound Transit light rail train and says (with a straight face) "we build transit on time and under budget!"
Top quality comedy, right there.
"We made coffee famous!"
"We invented commercial air travel"
"As King County Executive I'm going to... fix county government."
Even more amusing is the fact that Philips actually lifted the "we invented commercial air travel" and the personal computer bit from Dow Constantine, and he's pissed about it.
Sorry about that!
Posted by: Alphabet Soup on August 17, 2009 10:50 AMGood to know......Phillips....you're an @SS!
Posted by: Dengle on August 17, 2009 11:45 AMFunny!
Posted by: danno on August 17, 2009 11:48 AMThe personal computer claim might be just a mistake. But the transit claim?
Posted by: Jim Miller on August 17, 2009 12:14 PMI mean, c'mon. Jan Drago pinning her entire message to the bag tax? Aside from being unintentionally self-descriptive, having your teenage grandkid unleash the fury from a circa-1990s video toaster doesn't look professional in the slightest. Nickels very public mea culpa makes him look like a douchebag AND a wuss at the same time.
And you're right... the pep talk from Phillips is not only inaccurate, but downright silly. (Sunglasses? I should elect you because we wear sunglasses? WTF?) Given that the Port of Seattle and the Snohomish County Executive are probably far more important to negotiations with Boeing, talking about these things in the context of the race for Executive is just about as relevant as talking about them if you're running for City of North Bend Animal Control Officer.
@9: Dow Constantine stated it correctly though, in that local companies "revolutionized" personal computing. And amongst all of the different political ads, at least he put out one that was mildly amusing (if horribly staged):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjOpafM9Yvg
Posted by: demo kid on August 17, 2009 12:16 PMDepending on who you are, the PC either came from the Apple II or the Altair. They came out at a very similar time. The altair was essentially a slightly less expensive miniporter or the harbinger of the microcomputer. The apple II was very much the model for the IBM PC, which came out about 3 years later. I was at IBM at that time and worked on the PC in Rat Mouth, FL.
Essentially the IBM PC was a cross breed between the Apple II and the S-100 machines (Imsai, Pertek, Cromemco, etc) that ran CP/M. It shipped initially with the same software that everybody ran on Apples when they were being used for business, either CP/M or UCSD Pascal. But Gary Kildall at Digital Research was being a total jerk toward the IBM management, and also insisted on keeping the prices for CP/M in the $300 range, which was going to seriously handicap the market acceptance of what was, sort of, a new and somewhat wierd machine.
The solution was to ask Microsoft (which was doing the BASIC interpreter on the moboard for diskless use) if they could, maybe, do something in that space. The answer was yes, and so was born PC-DOS. PC-DOS was essentially just a way to start apps for a long time, but eventually grew into windows, etc, but thats another story.
The actual answer to where the PC came from then, was either florida, new york (IBM headquarters, (actually, I think Bellevue at the time) or Silicon Valley. Certainly Puget Sound had a role, but to call it "invented here" is stretching the point rather far.
BTW, the "father of the PC" was Phillip ("Don") Estridge who died, BTW, in Delta 191, and it was developed in Boca Raton, Florida.
Posted by: bfr on August 17, 2009 12:30 PMThe sentence fragment "New York (IBM headquarters" got truncated somewhere, and should read "New york (IBM Headquarters), Redmond (actually Bellevue at the time)"
Posted by: bfr on August 17, 2009 12:47 PMMicrosoft is to personal computing as Yugo is to automotives.
Altair, Radio Shack (TRS-80) could either one possibly win an argument on why they deserve the title, but for my money the real take off point for the industry was the Apple II and the introduction of the disk drive. This Apple introduction turned the machines into something that average people could use productively, and allowed for things like Visicalc (the great grandfather of Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3.)
The IBM PC was designed around the idea of how to do an Apple II only better, as were the Atari 400/800, Commodore 64, Amiga, Mac, etc. It really was the one that showed the first commercial potential and got everyone else involved.
Posted by: johnny on August 17, 2009 01:21 PMThe Altair, as the OP says, usually gets credit. But I had a high school classmate who built his own computer from a kit as a science project around 1972, before the Altair. It was very primitive & limited. As I recall, the I/O consisted of toggle switches and flashing lights. Still it did compute.
There was not one particular point of 'invention,' just a continuum of development. Anyway, no matter how you slice it, Phillips' statement is laughable.
Posted by: russell garrard on August 17, 2009 01:23 PMThings have changed just a bit.
Thanks for your info, bfr. Good stuff.
Posted by: jimg on August 17, 2009 01:55 PMJust to show people how complex the question can be, let me mention the PDP-8, which was sometimes used as we now use personal computers, especially in labs, but in a few homes, too.
Posted by: Jim Miller on August 17, 2009 02:34 PMThere were lots of computers that lived in the techie world and the homes of spoiled kids. Most of which I would not consider mainstream.
During the 80's personal computing came in pretty much three flavors. IBM PC, TRS 80 and Kaypro. Those three pretty much battled it out. Just because IBM called their offering the "Personal Computer" it does not meant that it was. They were expensive and less powerful than a radio shack coco.
I don't think you can really nail down a single computer that could be called the first one until you define what personal computing is.
Heck. My Apple Newton was probably what I would consider a personal computer. It was the first one I had that I could carry and use everywhere.
Why would you vote for these kooks?
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on August 17, 2009 05:11 PMYou could pick the Altair, but like the others, it was not accessible, so I don't really consider it a personal computer. Microsoft was, of course, founded to make Altairs run software. And that's great and all, but it's not inventing the personal computer. Bill Gates wouldn't ever claim it was.
The real first personal computers IMO -- available and accessible -- were in 1977, the TRS-80, Apple II, and Commodore whateveritwas.
Microsoft was doing interesting things in all this time. But there's one more important thing to remember.
At the time, Microsoft was in New Mexico. They didn't move to Bellevue until 1980.
My next computer was the TRS-80 III which led to my ordering the WANG Z80 word processors for my clerks while stationed as Admin NCO for the Post Cdr. at Ft Richardson. My next job was to maintain a WANG Office Information System with 12 terminals and a 200 MB HD. I replaced that with a Novell system. I retired from the service; went to work for a major company all while working with computers and servers. My final job before retiring again was product manager for server health monitoring.
To say the least - I have very much enjoyed computers and working with them over the last 33 years!
Posted by: Tim on August 17, 2009 07:20 PMWake up, liberals ! You have squandered an incredible amount of financial resources in King County by being too proud to vote for only your ilk, even though they have created this huge problem. I am advocating voting for any of the other candidates - preferably less liberal ones here.
Fred Jarrett, Susan Hutchison, Alan Lobdell and maybe even Ross Hunter would be a big improvement over the financial mismanagement and alleged corruption by "Tax to the Max" Sims. To anyone who doesn't get this: Get a clue and get a grip before you vote.
Posted by: KDS on August 17, 2009 09:32 PM"The Xerox Alto was an early personal computer developed at Xerox PARC in 1973. It was the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and graphical user interface (GUI)."
The Altair didn't show up until 1975.