Early Home Computers (Shire Library)

This is the story of the people and machines that revolutionized our lives and made personal computers an integral part of our homes. For the typical family in the 1960s and 1970s, computers were both fascinating and frightening, but largely a mystery. Developments in microelectronics in the early 1970s meant that computers at home seemed about to become commonplace: the kitchen computer would hold all of the family's recipes and keep a record of food in the larder, the study computer would manage the family finances, and the kids' computers would educate and entertain them. Engineers, enthusiasts and budding entrepreneurs set about making home computers a reality, and although the first machines were extremely limited, later machines would indeed begin to revolutionize our lives at home, at school, and at work.

Kevin Murrell is a trustee and Director of Britain's National Museum of Computing, and Secretary of the Computer Conservation Society. He is the author of several lectures and articles for the Computer Conservation Society as well as contributing to Alan Turing and his Contemporaries (2012).