Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation (Mit Press)

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A celebration of the early years of the digital revolution, when computing power was deployed in a beige box on your desk.

Today, people carry powerful computers in our pockets and call them “phones.” A generation ago, people were amazed that the processing power of a mainframe computer could be contained in a beige box on a desk. This book is a celebration of those early home computers, with specially commissioned new photographs of 100 vintage computers and a generous selection of print advertising, product packaging, and instruction manuals. Readers can recapture the glory days of fondly remembered (or happily forgotten) machines including the Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple Lisa, and Mattel Aquarius—traces of the techno-utopianism of the not-so-distant past.

Home Computers showcases mass-market success stories, rarities, prototypes, one-offs, and never-before-seen specimens. The heart of the book is a series of artful photographs that capture idiosyncratic details of switches and plugs, early user-interface designs, logos, and labels. After a general scene-setting retrospective, the book proceeds computer by computer, with images of each device accompanied by a short history of the machine, its inventors, its innovations, and its influence. Readers who inhabit today’s always-on, networked, inescapably connected world will be charmed by this visit to an era when the digital revolution could be powered down every evening.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press; Illustrated edition (May 19, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262044013
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262044011
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.83 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.56 x 1.07 x 10 inches