"Microelectronics and the Personal Computer"
Magazine article
By: Alan C. Kay
Date: September 1977
Source: Kay, Alan C. "Microelectronics and the Personal Computer." Scientific American, September 1977, 231, 242–244.
About the Author: Alan C. Kay (1941–) was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah in 1969. In 1970, he became professor at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Two years later, he joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California. In 1984, he became research fellow at Apple Computer.
Introduction
The first computers were large and massive, in part because their circuitry contained vacuum tubes, large partly or wholly evacuated cylinders through which an electric charge passed. Computers of such size could not fit on a desk and were not portable. Scientists needed to reduce their size,...
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1970's Science and Technology Primary Sources
The 1970's: Primary Sources
