The first PC circa 1965 1299

Tim Shoppa

And the Wang. Those all appeared later than the DAC. The DAC was preceded by the Mathatronics, which was effectively about 1-8 the DAC and much slower. However it inspired me "I can do better". The Mathatronics was a lovely name. The DAC capacity was deliberately made sufficient to hold mortality tables, since I had had to do actuarial calculations in my youth, and the whole US life insurance industry was 40 miles north of us. They didn't leap on it though.

Another contrast - HP-Monroe-Litton all had considerably more financial backing. We started this with $25,000 between us, thus the violent cash flow problems later.

Yes, they had to be keyed in. However you could have basically 8 routines present at once, and they survived power cycling. I took pains with that. You can see a set of tabs on the left of the keyboard into which you could insert a plastic cover for a label. The label could mark what routine was mounted, and the plastic insertion operated a switch which made the routine read-only.

It is surprising what you can do with 64 key instructions and a loop.

-- "If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson