who invented the personal computer and in what year?

Answer 1

1936 Konrad Zuse - Z1 Computer First freely programmable computer.
1942 John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry
ABC Computer Who was first in the computing biz is not always as easy as ABC.
1944 Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper
Harvard Mark I Computer The Harvard Mark 1 computer.
1946 John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly
ENIAC 1 Computer 20,000 vacuum tubes later...
1948 Frederic Williams & Tom Kilburn
Manchester Baby Computer & The Williams Tube Baby and the Williams Tube turn on the memories.
1947/48 John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley
The Transistor No, a transistor is not a computer, but this invention greatly affected the history of computers.
1951 John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly
UNIVAC Computer First commercial computer & able to pick presidential winners.
1953 International Business Machines
IBM 701 EDPM Computer IBM enters into 'The History of Computers'.
1954 John Backus & IBM
FORTRAN Computer Programming Language The first successful high level programming language.
1955
(In Use 1959)
Stanford Research Institute, Bank of America, and General Electric
ERMA and MICR The first bank industry computer - also MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) for reading checks.
1958 Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce
The Integrated Circuit Otherwise known as 'The Chip'
1962 Steve Russell & MIT
Spacewar Computer Game The first computer game invented.
1964 Douglas Engelbart
Computer Mouse & Windows Nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end.
1969 ARPAnet The original Internet.
1970 Intel 1103 Computer Memory The world's first available dynamic RAM chip.
1971 Faggin, Hoff & Mazor
Intel 4004 Computer Microprocessor The first microprocessor.
1971 Alan Shugart &IBM
The "Floppy" Disk Nicknamed the "Floppy" for its flexibility.
1973 Robert Metcalfe & Xerox
The Ethernet Computer Networking Networking.
1974/75 Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers The first consumer computers.
1976/77 Apple I, II & TRS-80 & Commodore Pet Computers More first consumer computers.
1978 Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston
VisiCalc Spreadsheet Software Any product that pays for itself in two weeks is a surefire winner.
1979 Seymour Rubenstein & Rob Barnaby
WordStar Software Word Processors.
1981 IBM
The IBM PC - Home Computer From an "Acorn" grows a personal computer revolution
1981 Microsoft
MS-DOS Computer Operating System From "Quick And Dirty" comes the operating system of the century.
1983 Apple Lisa Computer The first home computer with a GUI, graphical user interface.
1984 Apple Macintosh Computer The more affordable home computer with a GUI.
1985 Microsoft Windows Microsoft begins the friendly war with Apple.

Answer 2

Altair, 1974 (for which B. Gates and Paul Allen wrote a 4KB basic interpreter) IMSAI 8080 was next, then Processor Technology's SOL 20 of which I bought one in March 1977.
Feeman's link above is full of false info. The Altair sold for much more than $400. as the 8080 CPU was $397.00.
In fact the SOL 20 kit I bought was a little over $1,200. in 1977
Memory was $600.00 for 16KB and Silicon Valley was called that even then.
An 8" floppy disc drive went for $2,500., and used Daisy Wheel printers were $1,500. (30 chr/sec) and converted IBM selectrics with a computer interface (10 chars/sec) went for $1,200.

Prior to the IBM PC, the micro computers were called 'hobby computers'
Late 1977, I sold some as wordprocessors (with 'The Electric Pencil' software) for $9,000, which was $4,500 less than the then lowest priced dedicated word processor, the Lanier.

Answer 3

I'll come to the "personal computer" shortly, but lets begin with the world's first regular routine office computer. It was commissioned in 1951 by Joe Lyons Tea Houses in London. It was called "LEO1" (Lyons Electronic Office) and it was used for stock control. It was, of course, huge and occupied its own building.

Thirty years later along came Sir Clive Sinclair with an astonishing little device called the "Sinclair ZX Spectrum". The computer and its multi-functional keyboard were housed in the same unit which was only the size of a sheet of A5 paper. You plugged in a portable cassette tape recorder to load programs and/or data files (about 10 minutes to load a spreadsheet), then you connected the ZX to the aerial socket of a TV set, to get your fully functioning computer. It was revolutionary in both size and function, and later came a tiny printer (about the size of a large box of household matches)which produced print by applying heat to special thermal paper.

I believe the ZX to be probably the first personal computer. In Britain at least, the ZX was soon followed by the CPC464 marketed by Alan Michael Sugar Trading (better known as "AMSTRAD". This closely resembled what we are used to today, but still used a cassette player - in this case, built in to the keyboard (as was the processor, etc.)

In the early 1980s the office environment was introduced to the Commodore PET. Programs were fed from, and data saved on five and a quarter inch floppy disks (and they were REALLY floppy). One went into Drive A to boot up the machine, and the other went into Drive B. When the internal hard disk drive came along it was, of course, referred to as Drive C, but then Drive B became redundant, and so was born the anomaly of Drive A for the 3 and half inch "floppies" of today, followed by Drive C for the hard drive.

Answer 4

It was a Hippie, he was taking college classes and living in a boat, one day he was messing around with a calculator until he discovered a way to manipulate the program.

Answer 5

The very first PC was Datapoint 2200, made by CTC in 1970.

Answer 6

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/story071.htm

Answer 7

didn't you hear the news? The PC turned 30 less than a month ago.

Answer 8

TRY SEARCHING NEXT TIME
http://www.faqfarm.com/Q/When_what_the_first_PC_invented_and_by_whom

Answer 9

no idea