Before the Altair: The History of Personal Computing.

Today's personal computers are designed and sold by Apple, IBM Corp., and others, but researchers had developed ideas and techniques they use by the mid of 1970s. This article discusses nine of those early ideas, the people who had them, and labs where they worked. The personal computer industry had a foundation to build on. The first years were like a fast-forward replay of the computer and word processing industries, assemblers, high-level languages, operating systems, superscalar CPU, and modern applications, were implemented as soon as falling cost allowed. The similarity of today's systems to the Alto, is an indication that the computer industry has consumed much of the intellectual capital developed at MIT, SRI, and PARC. Vannevar Bush, a prominent researcher at MIT developed a device called memex, which keeps an account of all books, records, and communications. Interactive computer bloomed at MIT in the 1950s, beginning with Jay Forrester's Whirlwind computer.