As we close out 1985 on Computer Chronicles, the discussion returned to a familiar subject–storage devices. This next episode looked at hard disk storage specifically. Keep in mind, hard disks were still not considered standard equipment at this time. The Macintosh, for example, did not come with a hard drive. And while you could purchase an IBM PC-AT with a 30 MB internal drive, many users still had to make an aftermarket purchase to acquire a hard disk, which could run over $1,000. Even at the lower end, you would still pay several hundred dollars for a device that stored a total of 60 MB.

This next Computer Chronicles episode launched the annual tradition of presenting a “buyers guide” for the holiday season. (It’s referred to as a “Christmas Buyer’s Guide” for this first installment.) These episodes would air each December for the duration of the series and typically featured panels composed of regular contributors.

Indeed, this first buyers guide had no in-studio guests aside from the three regular contributors from this third season: George Morrow, Paul Schindler, and Wendy Woods (who made her first on-set appearance). Woods presented one remote segment, but otherwise this episode simply had the hosts and contributors recommend technology-themed gifts to the viewers.

The term “home computer” was always a bit vague. Even today, I know there is some debate among tech historians over what machines actually fit that description. For example, was the Apple II a home computer despite the fact it cost substantially more than, say, a Commodore 64?

In my own review of this period, I’ve come to look at the Home Computer Era as extending from roughly 1977 to 1985. It was in April 1977 that former Chronicles host Jim Warren’s first West Coast Computer Faire featured the debut of the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the Tandy TRS-80, the so-called “trinity” of early home computers.

Gary Kildall was not just the co-host of Computer Chronicles. He also co-founded and ran two software companies, Digital Research and KnowledgeSet (originally Activenture). As a software guy, Kildall was naturally interested in the newest means of distributing programs. Back in the first season of Chronicles, Kildall touted the potential of two possible magnetic disk replacements–the Capacitance Electronic Disc and bubble memory–neither of which panned out in the market.

But the third time was a charm, right? At least that was Kildall’s hope when he started Activenture to develop CD-ROM technology. The CD-ROM had also been featured on Chronicles before, when a Sony representative suggested we would see compact discs in computers by the end of 1985. Kildall certainly believed that would happen. Indeed, at the 1985 Summer Consumer Electronics Show, Activenture demonstrated its first CD-ROM product–an electronic version of the Grolier’s Encyclopedia–running off a CD player connected to an Atari 520 ST.

This episode of Computer Chronicles from November 1985 returned to a favorite topic of the show: artificial intelligence and expert systems. Here, the focus was on the practical applications of such technology to the field of medicine. Essentially, how could computers be used to improve the delivery of health care?

From Artificial Hearts to a “Doctor in a Box”?

To kick things off, Stewart Cheifet presented his cold open from Penn State’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He held the Penn State Heart, a mechanical artificial heart that had recently been used to keep a man named Anthony Mendia alive for 10 days. But that was nothing compared to another prototype that Cheifet displayed, a new artificial heart with a microprocessor inside that could control all of the device’s functions. Cheifet said this device would be ready for human use in about five years and was just one example of how computer technology could be used in medical research.

Many Computer Chronicles episodes to this point have discussed, or at least mentioned, the influence of politics on the tech industry. But this next episode from November 1985 looks at how the computers were influencing politics. And our hosts were not necessarily encouraged by what they saw.

Would the “Information Age” Lead to a “1984-ish” Scenario?

Stewart Cheifet did his cold open from the United States Capitol building in Washington, DC. He said the federal government cranked out millions of pieces of paper per day. You couldn’t find a better prospect for the “paperless office” and computers. He added that computers were not only being used in government, but also in campaigning.

IBM was not having the best year in 1985. In October, Big Blue reported its third consecutive drop in quarterly profits. TopView, IBM’s attempt to introduce multi-tasking into DOS, had not taken the business market by storm. And then there was the ever-increasing competition from various PC clone makers.

But we’re still in the period where many industry observers kept their faith in IBM’s ability to brute-force its will upon the market. That leads into our next Computer Chronicles episode from October 1985, which focused on computer networks. As Stewart Cheifet mentioned during the last episode’s “Random Access” segment, IBM had recently launched its new token ring system, which was the company’s challenge to 3Com’s Ethernet standard in local area networking.

A “Random Access” item in the last episode discussed a 1985 bill introduced in the United States Senate, S.1305, which proposed to prohibit anyone from “knowingly entering or transmitting by means of a computer” any content related to child pornography. Although similar legislation is now on the federal statute books, this particular bill never made it out of the Senate despite enthusiastic support from then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration.

There was substantial resistance to S.1305 from civil liberties advocates and the tech industry, who feared the legislation would stifle the nascent computer bulletin board system (BBS) market. In a February 1986 Baltimore Sun column, David H. Rothman cited one BBS operator–who happened to be a lawyer–who said, “Just word of one prosecution would be enough to frighten some board operators” into shutting down completely. The problem, Rothman explained, was that the word “knowingly” in S. 1305 could implicate honest BBS operators who were simply too overwhelmed to monitor their users’ posts 24 hours a day. For example, another operator he spoke to said that he made a diligent effort to prevent users from illegally posting people’s credit card numbers, yet “[n]umbers went up [] before he could zap them, and authorities subjected him to a legal battle.”

Few industries were transformed more by the rise in computer technology than the media. This next Computer Chronicles episode from October 1985 looked at the interaction of computers and the media, with a focus on practical applications in the television, radio, and newspaper industries. The final segment also returned to a favorite topic of the show, computer graphics, where the work of one of the guests would help lead to the creation of a whole new form of media–the computer-animated film.

The Macintosh never lived up to the hype of the infamous “1984” Super Bowl ad. But by the end of 1985, the Mac started to find its niche as a desktop publishing machine. It was actually the launch of Apple’s LaserWriter printer in March 1985 that helped spark this new age of computer-based publishing. Indeed, the $2,500 Macintosh was effectively an accessory for the $7,000 laser printer, not so much the other way around.