Great Moments in PC History

With the IBM Personal Computer 30th anniversary this month, Hewlett-Packard collaborated with the Computer History Museum to create the cool infographic we reproduce below.

It captures some great moments in computer history--spanning from the 1975 MITS Altair personal computing kit to now.

The cutting edge is a great place to be, but looking back at big moments in computing history is fun for geeks like me, too.

I know you remember your first computer.

When I was a kid, my family couldn't afford to buy me my own computer. But I did spend countless hours in my elementary school's computer lab--playing with the Apple IIe.

I learned how to make banners for family parties using a dot matrix printer back in the fourth grade with that computer. It was a big deal then. And I spent more hours playing Oregon Trail than you want to know about.

Later, I had an Atari 2600 video game console with the Basic Programming game cartridge and dual controllers. That was in 1986, so it was old even then, but it still worked great. You could program music and write your own basic games for the Atari on it.

No matter when you joined the computer tech revolution or how, this graphic will take you back. Thanks, HP and Computer History Museum.

Brian Burgess is the executive editor at BYTE. Follow him @mysticgeek. Want to talk about your first computer? Got a tip or an idea on some new technology? Send it to Brian at [email protected].