At the time (around the middle of the 20th century) when few people knew the word “computer”, and most of them thought that the “computer” meant a person who solved equations, there were people, who dreamed of a personal computer. There were a number of contenders for the title of Personal Computer before the machines that we now think of in this context appeared on the scene. For example, some historians have called the IBM 610 Auto-Point Computer, introduced in September 1957, IBM’s first personal computer on the premise that it was intended for use by a single operator, but this machine was a big cabinet, was not based on the stored program concept and it cost $55000, a huge sum for the time! No way to be personal at all! So, who was the first?
| Electric Brain Simon, Edmund Berkeley, 1950 | LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer), 1961 |
| Dynabook, Alan Kay, 1968 | Hewlett-Packard 9100A, 1968 |
| LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), 1961 | Imlac PDS-1, 1970 |
| Datapoint 2200, 1970 | Kenbak-1, John BlanKENBAKer, 1971 |
| Xerox Alto, 1972 | Hewlett-Packard 9830A, 1972 |
| Micral, François Gernelle, 1973 | Wang 2200, 1973 |
| Scelbi-8H, 1974 | Altair 8800, Ed Roberts, 1974 |
| IBM Portable Computer 5100, 1975 | Sphere 1, Michael Donald Wise, 1975 |
| Digital Group Systems, 1975 | Sol-20, Lee Felsenstein, 1976 |
| Xerox NoteTaker, 1976 | Compucolor 8001, 1976 |
| Tandy TRS-80, 1977 | Apple ][, 1977 |
| Grid Compass, 1979 | Sinclair ZX80, 1980 |
| IBM PC, 1981 | Osborne 1, 1981 |
| Commodore 64, 1982 | Apple Macintosh, 1984 |
| Poqet PC, 1989 | IBM Simon Personal Communicator, 1992 |
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