>Introduction by Major Dale J.Long , USAF(Ret.)

To really do justice to the last 20 years, we need to start just a bit further back:  the 1970s. 

It was during this period that the pioneers of personal computing

developed the first systems designed for individual users.

Many people credit Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, of Apple computer fame,

with developing the first personal computer (PC). 

As the story goes, both of these bright young men were fresh out of college in 1976. 

Much to their dismay,

they discovered that their access

to the university mainframe had been terminated when they graduated. 

As they were both allegedly Net Trek addicts, this was an interminable situation

— the Federation needed them!

When they pleaded for access,

they were essentially told that if they were that desperate to save

the Federation from the Romulan Empire they should go build their own computer. 

And so 13 days later they did.

The Apple I debuted in April 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, CA. 

It was basically a circuit board based around the 1 megahertz MOStek 6502 chip with 8 kilobytes of RAM

(expandable to 32KB) and an optional cassette tape-interface. 

The circuit board sold for $666.66, but you had to build your own case and plug it into a TV to get a display.

However, the Apple I wasn't actually the first personal computer on the block.

The IBM 5100 Portable Computer, circa 1975, was the world's first integrated, transportable computer. 

At a cost of $20,000, the 5100 was the computer world's equivalent of the Duesenberg. 

The 5100 featured a built-in CRT monitor,tape cartridge,

and included the APL and BASIC programming languages

and startup diagnostics in its 48KB of read-only memory (ROM). 

It could hold 16KB to 64KB of plug-in RAM, used a serial input/output bus, and came with a leather case.

However, the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer, also from 1975,

is the machine that really launched the PC industry. 

It employed an Intel 8080 Central Processing Unit (CPU),

which was originally used to control traffic lights,

a standard memory of 256 bytes (yes, that's bytes, not kilobytes),

four expansion slots, and 78 machine-language instructions. 

A kit cost $439 and a fully assembled version cost $621. 

MITS offered 4- and 8KB Altair versions of BASIC,

the first product developed by a little startup named Microsoft

run by a couple of guys named Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

Another line of influential early computers came from Commodore.

The Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor)

was also introduced at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire. 

Commodore produced a long line of inexpensive personal computers that brought computers to the masses. 

The Commodore VIC-20 was the first computer to sell 1 million units,

and the Commodore 64 was the first to offer a "huge" 64 KB of memory. 

> How John Titor swindled poor people 

 by Patrick Stephenson (Rochester Magazine):

However, warning of future events, and becoming a Cassandra,

were not among Titor's foremost objectives.

He felt that the destruction he'd predicted was inevitable.

His real mission, he said, had been to travel to Rochester,

Minnesota in 1975 and make contact with his grandfather,

an engineer on the team in charge of developing a computer called the IBM 5100,

which Titor needed to acquire.

He claimed the 5100's future value came from an ability

that hadn't been revealed by IBM upon its release,

and that this then unknown function was required

by scientists in Titor's time to resolve a computer problem they'd encountered.

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