Purchasing software in the late 1980s often required the buyer to carefully read the label, especially if you owned a personal computer that purported to be “compatible” with IBM. Take this diskette for the IBM port of The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate:

As you can see, the disk label states the game works with the “IBM PC, XT and 100% compatibles,” as well as the Tandy 1000. Tandy is the only compatible listed by name, as by this point–this was a 1990 release–the 1000 line was widely considered the gold standard for IBM compatibility.

The original Macintosh would not seem like an obvious gaming machine. It retailed for $2,500 at the time of its January 1984 release. You could have bought a dozen Atari 2600 consoles for the same amount of money. And while the Macintosh did boast high-resolution bitmap graphics–as well as the ability to display multiple windows–it came on a 9-inch monochrome display. Even the lowly Commodore 64 could display 16 colors, and use an ordinary television set to boot.

This episode of Computer Chronicles shows some of the minor tweaking to the show’s format between the first and second seasons. The first is the addition of Wendy Woods as a correspondent. Woods took over narrating the customary B-roll feature following the introduction and also conducted remote interviews with guests related to the topic of the episode.

The second change was that Stewart Cheifet now delivers a brief “cold open” before each episode introducing the topic. This was often done as a remote shot. The third and final change was that the main portion of the show now ended with a commentary segment, which was initially presented by our old friend Paul Schindler.

You often hear people describe modern smartphones as a “supercomputer in your pocket.” There’s definitely some truth to that, especially when you compare today’s phones with the supercomputers of 40 years ago. In the mid-1980s, supercomputer manufacturers were still struggling with concepts like parallel processing, i.e., breaking down a program into smaller tasks that could run simultaneously on multiple microprocessors. Today, in contrast, multi-core, multi-threaded CPU cores are the norm on just about every personal computing device.

For this episode, I’m going to handle things a bit differently. There was only a single guest–Stanford University computer science professor Edward Feigenbaum–and the subject is one that, quite frankly, does not strike me as all that interesting. So rather than do an extended point-by-point recap of the episode, I’m just going to summarize in broad strokes. Trust me, if you had watched the episode, you’d thank me.

Stanford Professor Discusses AI, Future of Japanese Computing Initiative

You may recall that Feigenbaum appeared in an earlier episode, which I recapped in Part 20. That clip was actually taken from the start of his interview from this episode. And really, this episode covers a lot of the same ground, which focused on knowledge-based or “expert” computer systems. Here, Feigenbaum talked about the state of such systems and the potential threat from Japan’s Fifth Generation computer project.

This next Computer Chronicles episode focused squarely on people rather than products. The formal subject is “computer entrepreneurs.” And the four guests are people who were all quite well known in the computer industry during the early 1980s. What’s fascinating, as we’ll see a bit later, is that two of the guests had ventures that each managed to flame out not long after this episode aired.

“I Had Been Working My Whole Life to Build a Certain Type of Computer for Myself.”

Of course, co-host Gary Kildall was himself a well-known computer entrepreneur, having founded Digital Research in 1974. Stewart Cheifet opened the show by asking Kildall about the changes to the “people side” of the computer industry over the decade that followed. Kildall joked he’d traded in his cowboy boots and jeans for a three-piece suit. On a more serious note, he said the biggest change he’d observed was that the industry went from having no products that were competitive to a market where everyone–including IBM–was now producing machines with multi-million dollar budgets. As a result, the industry had become more professional with higher stakes, but also more fun in Kildall’s estimation.

The ostensible topic of this next Computer Chronicles episode was databases. But what we’re really talking about here are early online information systems–that is, the precursor to the modern Internet. This was a time (1984) when just getting online was a chore. First, you needed a personal computer with a separate modem peripheral connected to a telephone line. Then you needed a subscription to an online service. The service itself charged you by the minute or hour for access–and that was on top of any long-distance phone charges you might incur if the service did not have a local number.

Personal computers of the early 1980s were often limited to just a few colors for on-screen graphics. The Apple IIe, for example, could display up to 16 colors at one time depending on the screen resolution. And of course, no home computer of this era could produce genuine 3D graphics. That capability was limited to very high-end machines designed for industrial or commercial use.

The Special Talents of Computer Graphics

Which brings us to our next Computer Chronicles episode from 1984. The subject is computer graphics. And while Stewart Cheifet does open the program with a demonstration of a graphics peripheral designed for personal computers, most of the program is devoted to technology that was beyond the financial or technical capacity of the home user.

In Part 14 of this series, the Computer Chronicles first discussed the subject of “expert systems.” This referred to computer knowledge bases that purported to replicate a human’s expertise in a particular field. This next Chronicles episode revisits the idea of expert systems as part of a broader discussion of artificial intelligence.

The Link Between the Mechanical World and Abstract Concepts

Herbert Lechner is back as Stewart Cheifet’s co-host for this episode. The program opens with Cheifet demonstrating a pocket chess computer–I could not make out the model, but I’m guessing it’s from Radio Shack. Cheifet noted that chess was considered the “ultimate game of skill” and required a certain amount of mental agility or “intelligence.” And yet, this simple computer was capable of applying a certain kind of intelligence by analyzing board positions and selecting moves.

When Apple released the Macintosh–later known as the Macintosh 128K–in January 1984, its main selling point was the graphical user interface (GUI). Although the original Macintosh operating system’s GUI was largely based on what Apple deployed on the Lisa a year earlier, the company believed the new machine’s lower price point would make the interface more accessible to a larger audience.

Of course, the Macintosh was not exactly cheap, even by 1984 personal computer standards. As Gregg Williams noted in the May 1984 issue of Byte magazine, a “usable” Macintosh system, including a second disk drive and basic office software, would cost $3,879. This was nearly $1,000 more than the price Apple quoted for the same setup a few months earlier, Williams noted, and it undercut Steve Jobs’ marketing claims that the Macintosh would be “something really inexpensive so that everyone can afford it”