diff --git a/.zk/notebook.db b/.zk/notebook.db index 58760af..4331c16 100644 Binary files a/.zk/notebook.db and b/.zk/notebook.db differ diff --git a/zk/The_History_of_Computing_Swade.md b/zk/The_History_of_Computing_Swade.md index 0bd8cc6..816c408 100644 --- a/zk/The_History_of_Computing_Swade.md +++ b/zk/The_History_of_Computing_Swade.md @@ -687,3 +687,24 @@ additional companies entering the mini-computer market: Data General, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard. Mini-computers died as a category in the mid-1990s in the wake of the PC. + +## The Personal Computer + +The PC emerged out of advances in IC chip design - this was the engine of the +PC. + +Intel (newly founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore) were charged with making +custom chips for a Japanese calculator company. Instead of creating the custom +chips, they advised the company to use a general purpose chip that could handle +general computing as well as the basic calculator functions. This generic chip - +the Intel 4004 - was the microprocessor combined with three other ICs +(comprising 2.3k transistors) that comprised the fundamental building blocks of +the #vonNeumann architecture. + +However it took until the Apple II in 1977 for the phrase "personal computer" to +enter the lexicon and become an identifiable class. + +The broader context for this was the computer hobbyists in Silicon Valley/Menlo +Park (particularly the Homebrew Club of amateur computer engineers) along with +idealistic figures from the 60s counterculture (such as Stuart Brand) who began +associating computing technology as a tool of personal liberty and fulfillment.