Finished reading: Go Computer Now! by Ben Zotto 📚

Delightful book about the start of the personal computer, and Sphere Corporation, arguably the first company to ship a personal computer, beating all others to the punch, but quickly failing and being forgotten in history until Ben Zotto finds a box of old computer parts on the sidewalk.

Such a wonderful time in computer history. The story about the life and death of Sphere and its brushes with greatness. Bill Gates, Woz, Radio Shack, Apple, IBM, and others are in this story. I love the early history and how the personal computer came to be. And the start of personal Software, small-business accounting, and word processors that people could only dream about began to take shape. These programs were shipped on punch tape or cassette tape until floppy disks came along.

This is the first book I’ve read on the early rise of the personal computer. I’ll be exploring other books about the time frame now. There are a lot of twists and turns as folks battle to be the first.

Some interesting tidbits are:

  • In the 1960’s, software programs could cost $30,000, and a word processing program in the 1970’s dropped to $5,000 with the rise of personal computers.

  • I started computing with floppies and knew about reel-to-reel tape, but did not realize that early programs came on cassette tapes. And boy, were there a lot of problems with those, not to mention getting them to work with your computer, you had to be a hobbiest electrical engineer.

  • 1975 brings the first software distributor. Mel Norell with Programma.

  • Just the story alone of the BASIC programming language is fascinating. Without that on your personal computer, you were extremely limited in what you could do with it.

The author Ben Zotto has a wonderful website and Sphere Emulator that you can use to see how primitive the early computers were. Remember, this thing was cutting-edge at the time. If you really want the full experience, you can purchase a module.

You can purchase the book here. Current news and subscribing to the newsletter here. Ben is still finding parts and talking to ex-users.

Highly Recommend!