The second annual Computer Chronicles episode to focus on the fall COMDEX show in Las Vegas aired in November 1987, just a few days after the event concluded. Back in the San Mateo, California, studio, Stewart Cheifet and George Morrow looked at some video footage recorded on the show floor. Cheifet noted this was the biggest COMDEX ever, with the most exhibitors and attendees. But what went on at the event? Was there any buying or selling actually taking place? Or was it just PR and gawking?
Computer Chronicles Revisited 72 — COMDEX/Fall '86
The first Computer Dealers Exhibition was held in 1979 in the ballroom of the original MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. (That hotel is now known as Bally’s.) According to a 2021 retrospective by Bob McGlincy for Exhibit City News, that first show drew 167 exhibitors and roughly 3,900 attendees. Subsequent exhibitions–known by the abbreviated name of COMDEX–would draw substantially greater interest from the growing personal computer industry and its customers.