CONCLUSIONS - Inventing the PC - page 167

Army posts in Europe as of September 1975, I resolved to
purchase one ASAP … After receiving it, I spent hours a
day exploring the machine's capabilities, even discovering
some undocumented features that were mind-boggling
to me then. I taught business statistics during the fall se-
mester of 1976 in both Frankfurt and Giessen … I had
no problems with the computer while carrying it all over
Europe … I did enjoy using the MCM /70, and it was a
beautiful piece of engineering for its time. 17
Courtney's computer now resides at the Computer History
Museum in Mountain View, California.
On the other side of the Atlantic, too, MCM computers were
finding their way into businesses and research institutes across
Europe, from France, where the MCM /70's sales were particu-
larly strong, to the Soviet Union. In an August 1999 interview,
Andrei Kondrashev, a co-founder of Chicago-based Lingo Al-
legro USA , told APL Quote Quad that the Computer Centre
of the Academy of Science of the USSR had a few dozen MCM
computers. Kondrashev used the academy's MCM /70s to work
on his college graduation project. “I even had an MCM -70 in
my home for quite a long time with APL .” 18
We could have been Apple
In a confidential letter dated 20 February 1973, and addressed
to A. Carr, director of the electronics branch of the Department
of Industry, Trade & Commerce, MCM wrote, “Our product is
truly a breakthrough and we believe we not only have the lead
time to capitalize on the revolution but also the capability of
maintaining our leadership through a continuous introduction
to the market, of a series of models for various diverse applica-
tions within the family of products, in relatively short intervals
of time.” 19