A Brief History Of The Humble Personal Computer
When speaking of ‘personal computers’, you need to understand that these are considered to be a computer that is mainly used by an individual for his/her personal use only. The use of computers in this manner began during the mid 1970′s and has traveled one heck of a long way since then.
Today, you can actually consider many of the cell phones on the market as ‘mini personal computers’ and they do an excellent job, especially considering how very small they are! Personal computers infiltrate the very fabric of our society today. Almost anywhere you can find electricity you will find personal computers. (In reality, you don’t even need the electricity, but you better have some serious batteries…)
We have gone from what today would be considered ‘calculators’ to personal computers that can take pictures, do live video feeds and do countless calculations per minute. Almost everyone has one and many couldn’t live without it.
Initially personal computers cost a lot of money, considering what they actually did. But today, they are relatively inexpensive keeping in mind what tasks they can perform. (And we haven’t even talked about email!) As of June of 2008 there were over one billion personal computers in use worldwide and that growth rate is around 12 per year.