In Part 16, we saw a demonstration of Apple Logo, a computer programming language promoted as an alternative to BASIC. This next episode of The Computer Chronicles features another version of Logo–this one developed and sold by co-host Gary Kildall’s Digital Research–as well as a broader discussion of the state of computer programming languages around early 1984. The other languages presented in this episode–COBOL, Forth, and Pascal–are still in use today, even if they are not necessarily at the top of the Stack Overflow survey of most popular programming languages.

This next episode of The Computer Chronicles from 1984 is about storage devices, specifically disk drives. At this point in the microcomputer revolution, the 5.25-inch floppy disk is the accepted standard. But a number of new technologies are vying to supplant it. And while Gary Kildall was bullish on at least some of these new technologies eventually gaining mainstream acceptance, one of the guests aggressively pushed back on the idea.

Today, Python is probably the most popular computer programming language taught in elementary and secondary schools. (There’s even a terrific podcast, Teaching Python, on this subject.) But back in the 1980s, BASIC was the language of choice for many introductory computer classrooms. Specifically, versions of Microsoft BASIC came with many popular 8-bit microcomputers, including the Apple II and Commodore 64, which were also commonly used in schools at the time.

However, BASIC was not the only educational programming language of the 1980s. There was also Logo, a language first developed in the late 1960s and modeled on an even older programming language, Lisp. Logo was especially popular in schools because of its use of graphics. This next episode of The Computer Chronicles provides an overview of Logo as part of a broader discussion into the use of computers in education.

Even if you’re only a casual gamer, there are probably a few video game designers whose names you’re familiar with, such as Sid Meier, Todd Howard, and Shigeru Miyamoto. From the early days of computer gaming, there was a concerted effort to promote certain “superstar” designers to help personalize and sell games to the public. This next episode of The Computer Chronicles featured three such designers from the early 1980s, as well as an executive whose name would become synonymous with computer and video game production in the decades that followed.

In a bit of eerie foreshadowing, this episode of The Computer Chronicles from January 1984 opened with a discussion of a global pandemic. Not a real one, of course, but a computer simulation. Stewart Cheifet and Gary Kildall played with a game called Epidemic, released by Strategic Simulations. Cheifet explained this was an example of how someone could use a computer to choose among alternatives, make a decision, and establish a complex strategy for solving a problem. In this case, the problem was a global pandemic caused by a virus brought from outer space by meteors. Epidemic provided the player with information about the spread of the virus and offered alternatives, such as developing a vaccine, for containing the pandemic.

The episode I’m covering today was taped on January 18, 1984, four days before Super Bowl XVIII. That game would go down in computing history for the famous Apple “1984” commercial that announced the launch of the original Macintosh (later known as the Macintosh 128K). As this Chronicles episode aired the week after the Super Bowl, Stewart Cheifet devoted a good portion of the post-show “Random Access” segment to the new machine and what it might mean for Apple for the rest of 1984.

Today’s episode contains what Stewart Cheifet would later describe as one of the classic “near disasters” involving a product demonstration on The Computer Chronicles. The subject was the first Xerox Color Laser Printer, which was actually a prototype not yet available for sale when this Chronicles episode taped in October 1983. Cheifet recounted the event to Tonya Hall of ZDNet in a November 2020 interview:

We introduced the very first color laser printer on the show by Xerox. I figured it’d be a printer–it was the size of two Volkswagens! We had to take the doors off the studio to get this thing inside. And it took three engineers three hours to get this thing hooked up. And I said, ‘Can we test it now?’ ‘Yeah, let’s test it.’ We went to the print button, hit the print button, and smoke came out of this printer. No output–smoke. I said, ‘Look, we’ve got to get this thing to work, guys.’ Finally, another hour later, they pressed the button and I saw the most gorgeous color output I’ve ever seen in my life from a computer.

Computer architecture is usually described in terms of bits. For instance, we often speak of early personal computers from the late 1970s and early 1980s as 8-bit machines. In simple terms, this means that the CPUs in these computers could only address 8 bits of data at a time, with each bit representing a single binary digit (0 or 1). But even when the first episodes of The Computer Chronicles started to air in late 1983, there were already 16-bit processors on the market, such as the Intel 8086, and 32-bit machines had started to become a reality.

Today, we think of networking as synonymous with the Internet–a global interconnected network that encompasses not just computers but also millions of “smart” devices. But in this episode of The Computer Chronicles from late 1983, the focus was on local area networking or LANs. Stewart Cheifet and Gary Kildall talked with representatives from two companies that were at the forefront of developing the still-emerging standards for computer networking.

Cheifet opened by asking Kildall to define a local area network. Kildall noted that ever since we’d had computers, people had beeen trying to hook them up to transmit data back and forth between them. LANs were generally used in office environments and limited to a relatively small geographic area. This limited area allowed for better performance relative to more traditional network systems.

This next episode of The Computer Chronicles from early 1984 examined the status of speech synthesis technology. Stewart Cheifet opened the program by showing off a mini version of the popular Speak & Spell toy. He also demonstrated the Minolta AF-S V, a “talking” camera that could vocalize basic warning messages to the user, such as that lighting conditions were “too dark!” and the operator needed to “use flash!”

Cheifet was joined in the co-host’s chair this week by Herbert Lechner of SRI International. With respect to the Minolta, Cheifet noted the talking feature wasn’t strictly necessary; a blinking light worked fine for most cameras. So he asked Lechner if the use of speech in such devices was a “marketing gimmick” or if there were useful applications for speech in computers. Lechner replied that he found himself not paying attention to the warning lights in his car, yet he paid attention when it talked to him. And there were a number of voice terminals in use today that relied on telephone technology.