There’s a telling comment from the previous Computer Chronicles episode that helps set the stage for this next program. When discussing the state of the computer software industry in late 1985, Electronic Arts founder and CEO Trip Hawkins said the market was driven by men who were primarily interested in entertainment. He explicitly said “men.”

The notion that computer games–and by extension, computers in general–were just for “men” reflects the larger problem of sexism that continues to plague the tech industry even today. Keep in mind, the problem was even worse in 1985 when access to computers was still a luxury for most people. This only exacerbated the difficulties for women looking to enter the male-dominated culture of computer engineering. In June 1985, Stanford University released a study that found only about one-third of computer programmers and analysts were women–and the women who held those jobs earned “far less” than their male counterparts.

This next episode continued the previous discussion about the noticeable slowdown in the computer industry during the summer of 1985. This time, the focus was on software and hardware manufacturers, including three companies that not only survived the slowdown but remain major players in the industry today.

Like the previous show, Stewart Cheifet did his cold open from a street location in Silicon Valley, specifically Semiconductor Drive in Sunnyvale. He rhetorically asked about the future of the high-tech business given the ongoing slowdown in computer sales.

The third season of Computer Chronicles debuted in September 1985 with a two-part look at the “slowdown in Silicon Valley.” Basically, these next two episodes consisted of round tables with people representing different facets of the computer industry to discuss why things seemed to be going much worse in 1985 as opposed to 1984. This first episode focused on the perspectives from venture capital, the media, analysts, and retailers, while in the next episode we’ll hear from software and hardware manufacturers.

When Computer Chronicles first delved into the topic of computer graphics back in April 1984, the focus was largely on high-end professional systems, such as the $150,000 Quantel Paintbox. More than a year later, in June 1985, Chronicles closed out its second season with another computer graphics show that looked at more affordable offerings for personal computer users.

Would Artists Abandon Paintbrushes for Graphics Pads?

Stewart Cheifet did his cold open at a California museum standing in front of what he described as “a fine example of abstract expressionist art” by artist Dan Cooper that was made using an Apple II. Cheifet quipped that old artists’ tools like brushes were becoming “passe” and replaced by touch-sensitive graphics pads and sophisticated graphics software.

In 1963, Japan’s government decided to build a planned scientific community about 35 miles north of Tokyo that would meet the country’s growing demand for high-tech research and technology. Known as Tsukuba Science City, the site today is home to roughly 150 research, educational, and high-tech business institutions. From March to October of 1985, Tsukuba also hosted a world’s fair called Expo ‘85, which was the sole focus of our next Computer Chronicles episode.

As we round the home stretch for the second season of Computer Chronicles, the show makes its first extended foray abroad. The next two episodes focus on Japan. This first episode from May 1985 examines the state of the Japanese personal computer market, while the second looks mostly at the country’s robotics industry.

Had Japan’s Window of Opportunity Closed?

Stewart Cheifet presented his cold open from Japantown in San Francisco. He said that while many Japanese products had become popular in the United States, one export that had not been very successful was the Japanese computer. This episode would explore why that was the case.

In my last post, I discussed Bill Gillis, then a Charles Schwab executive in charge of its technology division. Gillis came to Schwab from Mattel, the toy manufacturer best known for Barbie. In the early 1980s, Gillis oversaw Mattel’s efforts to compete in the video game console and low-cost computer markets with the Mattel Intellivision and the Mattel Aquarius, respectively. The Intellivision proved to be a modest success. The Aquarius, however, was such a bust that Mattel effectively pulled it off the market after just four months in 1984.

In the early 1980s, there were two major antitrust settlements that significantly impacted the evolution of the computer industry. The first was the the U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to withdraw its long-running antitrust case against IBM, which began in 1969. That lawsuit focused on IBM’s dominance in the mainframe and minicomputer markets, and the government’s retreat helped clear the path for IBM to aggressively enter the microcomputer market with the IBM PC.

One late night in the summer of 1972, an electrical engineering graduate student at the University of Washington named Tom Rolander was working in the school’s computer science lab when he saw a “fellow who looked like a student” sporting red hair and wearing cutoffs enter the room. The red-haired man pulled out a teletype, plugged it into a Sigma 5 computer, and started programming an Intel 4004–the very first commercially produced microprocessor, which had been released the previous November.

David Bunnell, a previous guest of Computer Chronicles, was well known in the mid-1980s as the publisher of PC World and Macworld magazines. The latter publication launched a companion trade show, the Macworld Expo, in February 1985, one year after Apple debuted the original Macintosh computer. Macworld went on to be a staple of the tech industry calendar for the next three decades.

One person who did not attend the initial Macworld–held at San Francisco’s Brooks Hall–was Apple Chairman (and Macintosh project lead) Steve Jobs. Bunnell, recalling that first Macworld weekend in a 2008 column for the San Francisco Chronicle, said Jobs was in town that weekend. Indeed, Jobs attended a dinner with Bunnell, Apple CEO John Sculley, and roughly 20 other people, to celebrate the conference. (Jobs arrived late, of course.)