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.

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.