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.)

Although Stewart Cheifet is long remembered as the host and executive producer of Computer Chronicles, he was actually not the first person to host the program. Before Chronicles went national on PBS in 1983, there was a locally aired live version on KCSM-TV hosted by Jim Warren, which started airing in September 1981. Unfortunately, there were apparently no recordings kept of any of the Warren-hosted episodes.

James Clarke Warren, Jr. (1936 - 2021)

Jim Warren passed away on the morning of November 24, 2021, at the age of 85. While he may be considered a footnote in the history of Computer Chronicles, his impact on the personal computing industry as a whole was far more significant. Born in July 1936, Warren began his career as a high school math teacher in the 1950s before earning his first of many college degrees. Indeed, Warren would eventually complete three master’s degrees–including one in computer engineering from Stanford–and stopped just short of earning a doctorate in that discipline.

The debut of VisiCalc in 1979 is often considered the first “killer app” for the personal computer. This early spreadsheet program helped propel sales of the Apple II, as it gave the machine a practical use for business customers. Along similar lines, a number of burgeoning software companies pushed personal finance software in the early 1980s as the next step in expanding personal computers into the home market.

Our next Computer Chronicles episode focuses on these personal finance software products. Stewart Cheifet presented his cold open standing in front of a wall filled with various paper tax forms. He noted there were at least 200 different IRS forms that a person might use when preparing their income tax returns–and almost as many personal finance software packages now on the market.

From time to time, I’ll be posting these “Special” blogs, which only indirectly relate back to a Computer Chronicles episode. Basically, a “Random Access” item or an offhand reference made during a show will send me down an interesting rabbit hole. But since the normal posts are long enough, I thought it made sense to segregate these tangents into their standalone posts.

Space-Age Technology for the Retail Makeup Counter

For this first special, I want to expand upon this “Random Access” item from the last episode I covered, which aired in March 1985:

Michael Lewis’ 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game described Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane’s use of advanced statistical analysis–known as sabermetrics–to build his team. The book was later turned into a film, which only further cemented the popular notion that Beane was the key figure in marrying computer-aided statistical research to the 19th century pastoral game.

Beane’s tenure as general manager did not begin until 1997. Nearly 15 years earlier, there was another important figure in the Oakland baseball hierarchy who served as a champion for using “computers in the dugout.” That was Steve Boros, a former third baseman who served as the A’s field manager during 1983 and part of 1984. After Oakland fired Boros mid-season, he joined the San Diego Padres front office and later served as their manager in 1986. During his front office stint in San Diego, Boros was also a guest on a March 1985 Computer Chronicles episode, where he discussed the role computers could–and should–play in baseball.

In 1969, a computer scientist at Bell Labs named Ken Thompson wrote an operating system for a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-7 minicomputer that he initially dubbed Unics. This was later renamed UNIX and continued to be developed at Bell throughout the 1970s, with each numbered version corresponding to the current edition of the accompanying UNIX Programmer’s Manual. In fact, just a few days ago marked the 50th anniversary of UNIX Version 1, dated November 3, 1971.

Up to this point on Computer Chronicles–we’re now at February 1985 in terms of broadcast dates–the featured computers have largely relied on typewriter-style keyboards as input devices and cathode-ray tube monitors for output. (Even the mouse had only started to enter more general usage with the 1984 release of the Apple Macintosh.) But in this next episode, the focus is on individuals who have different accessibility requirements when it came to using computers.

Although Paul Schindler’s commentary comes at the end of the episode just before “Random Access,” I thought I’d discuss his thoughts upfront this time as it helps provide some useful context for this early January 1985 episode, which is about portable computers. Schindler compared a portable computer to a portable sewing machine. With respect to the latter, he said it made more sense for most people just to carry a needle with them. Sure, you wouldn’t be able to do any fancy sewing with a needle, but you could do smaller jobs quickly.

In the last episode, Wendy Woods mentioned that during her testing of IBM PC software compatibility with the PCjr that only the version of Borland’s Sidekick without copy protection worked with the latter machine. The version with copy protection was incompatible with the PCjr.

You might wonder, then, why anyone would have purchased the copy protected version in the first place. The answer was likely price. According to Borland’s advertising from the time–early 1985–the protected version cost $55, while the non-protected version ran $85.