How they used to sell computers: Oldest computer ads:

http://www.topdesignmag.com/oldest-computer-ads/

by cwan • 16 years ago

81 37 16 years ago

Oldest? Most of those ads are from the early 80's. There are a few real old ones though -- the IBM AutoPoint 610 was released in 1957.

lwat• 16 years ago

Any ads for those?

tzs• 16 years ago

That's not the oldest one there, though. The LGP-30 was 1956.

ernestipark• 16 years ago

I see TI's computers haven't changed much.

juhygtfghjk• 16 years ago

Take an iPad, add a real touch type keyboard with mechanical switches, make the screen B+W for longer battery life and include user replacable AA batteries and you have the perfect TRS80 portable

beambot• 16 years ago

Wouldn't that basically be a Kindle?

fleitz• 16 years ago

The Tandy 1000sx ad really surprised me, the ad must have worked as there is one in my moms attic. Thats the computer that got me started programming.

dugmartin• 16 years ago

Same with me - I ended up changing out the processor and installing a 5mb hard disk that cost $500 and sounded like a jet engine when it booted.

yason• 16 years ago

Compuserve ad: "By the year 2000, the world may catch up with the way Compuserve's electronic mall lets you shop today."

gojomo• 16 years ago

Indeed: http://www.topdesignmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ad032...

I like that at the time, the mall photo shown inside the monitor would have been understood as purely evocative/figurative – whereas in another few decades, people looking back might wonder: "was that a real screen and was this the first rendered virtual mall environment?"

SwellJoe• 16 years ago

My first business was buying computers at garage sales and flea markets, fixing them, and reselling them. I've owned most of the personal computer gear in those ads, and a lot of interesting stuff not covered (like the original Lisa, the Colecovision Adam with cassette storage that was as fast as most floppy disk drives of the time, the huge TI99/4a expansion chassis with 8 slots).

Anyone who found this interesting should plan a trip to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I can spend all day just wandering through the collections, and listening to the docents (who are some of the same guys who built the technology we take for granted today) telling stories. I learn something new every time I visit, and I've been a nerd involved deeply in this stuff for ~30 years.

oofoe• 16 years ago

Should I be worried about how many of these I actually own?

By the way, I think the one in the Royal McBee advert is the predecessor to the machine immortalized by the immortal programmer's programmer in the pseudo-poem "The Story of Mel".

Legion2• 16 years ago

It's funny how many of these ads are aimed at "normal people", while "normal people" today would be considered completely incapable of operating machines as (relatively) user-unfriendly as some of these.

uvdiv• 16 years ago

Or maybe normal people today simply have expectations in keeping with modern technology? I'm sure modern Excel jockeys are fully capable of slogging through one of those assembly language manuals for dozens of hours. I think they could also calculate radicals to five significant figures using pen-and-paper algorithms, 19th-century style. Or till their own fields using oxen, 18th-century style. That these are all "unthinkable" today doesn't mean humans have suddenly become stupider and weaker (the opposite is true); it means they're immensely labor-consuming tasks which no longer serve a purpose, and to perform them would be an astonishing waste of effort.

jawee• 16 years ago

However, the expectation of easiness with computers does make one less-welling to work through and figure out things when it is necessary, I've found.

Legion2• 16 years ago

We're not talking about skills that have fallen out of use over generations and therefore stopped being passed down. The people that used these machines are generally still alive and the younger ones are still part of the workforce.

Also, any parts about people being "weaker" or "stupider" are your words, not mine.

electromagnetic2• 16 years ago

The thing that amazed me; "1K of memory expandable to 16K". I have yet to see this in a pre-built computer. The best I've seen was back when I had 128MB expandable to 1GB.

Although then again, a computer today comes with a year or more of warranty, while this had a 90-day warranty - which would personally scare the shit out of me today on an electronic product. Today that's dead in 6 months.

trezor4• 16 years ago

Those did indeed exist. My first computer actually only had 16kb of RAM, which was "plenty" given the typical simplicity of applications back then.

nervechannel2• 16 years ago

It's interesting how software got better over time on the same hardware back then.

My first was a 48KB Sinclair Spectrum which I used for at least 5 years, and the games coming out by the end of that time were much more sophisticated than the early ones, e.g. filled 3D polygon graphics over blocky 2D sprites. The programmers just had to squeeze more and more out of the same hardware.

These days, a similar jump in sophistication just doesn't happen without new hardware.

electromagnetic2• 16 years ago

I didn't mean 16K was small, I meant I've yet to see a 16-fold increase in upgradeable RAM size in a pre-built computer.

Keyframe• 16 years ago

Damn, haven't heard of Cromemco in a long time! Thanks for sharing this.

rbanffy• 16 years ago

My only wish would be for the ads to have a high-res version. I'd love to read them.

Some of them I never saw ;-)

to• 16 years ago

for xmas 1989 i got a C64. my uncle, big show off, got my cousins (two girls) an amiga. why? cause it cost a bit more. turns out amiga sucked and my C64 was pretty much awesome until i got a 286 a bit later. i even remember begging for 4MB more RAM so i can play rise of the triad ... anyway, thinking back it kinda feels like the C64 was a more open platform and everyone else was pretty much fucked.

baddox• 16 years ago

> Innovation at it's Very Best

I love glaring typos in prominent national advertisements.

elliottcarlson• 16 years ago

I still have a ZX-81, as well as a Epson HX-20 which is sadly not shown in these ads. It's amazing how far this technology has come in such a short time - and I love the prediction in the Compuserve ad about doing all shopping online by 2000.

joshbert• 16 years ago

I love MS, Gates and even like Ballmer. Having said that, get a load of this gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk

Amazing how commercials like this were helpful in the creation of such an empire. Oh, how the times change.

bitwize2• 16 years ago

The scary thing is Steve Ballmer looks almost exactly the same today. I think he may be fatter, though.

nitrogen2• 16 years ago

What was the deal with Nebraska?

bitwize2• 16 years ago

I think my dad had that 15MB hard disk unit from Radio Shack.

It was pretty sophisticated for its day. The previous model, an 8 MB unit, was half again as big.

bad_user• 16 years ago

My God, how expensive they were.

nitrogen2• 16 years ago

I chuckled at the inflation of the VGA's color palette in the Tandy 5000 MC ad. The VGA could display 16 or 256 simultaneous colors, but any palette entry could be changed to any 18-bit (6-bit per channel) RGB triplet (i.e. 256ki colors).

shorbaji• 16 years ago

Is it just me or do these ads look fairly similar to the landing pages of your typical web app?

dandrews• 16 years ago

I remember a string of ads for minicomputer Fortran compilers, placed in Computerworld circa 1970. One manufacturer (might have been Data General) proudly stated that their compiler was "a pig", featuring long compile times but turning out compact object code. Another manufacturer posted its own ad: "Our tiger eats pigs".

A glass teletype ad was captioned "Tough TTY". Hee! Couldn't get away with that these days.

How they used to sell computers: Oldest computer ads:

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