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after, hand-held and pocket-sized digital electronic calculators.
It wasn't so much the “cigarette pack” size or the aesthetically
pleasing plastic cases that attracted people to these new gadgets.
It was the idea of a personal calculator, of a powerful, inexpen-
sive calculating device for your own unrestricted use, always
in your pocket, in your briefcase, or on your desk. In 1971,
the promise of calculator power at your fingertips (pledged by
Bowmar Instrument Corporation, Canon, Commodore Busi-
ness Machines, and, soon after, by scores of other calculator
manufacturers) was rapidly gaining social acceptance.
What Kutt had in mind, however, was even bigger than the
pocket calculator. The effect of his invention on society was to
be even more profound than the replacement of slide rules and
electro-mechanical calculating devices with tiny battery-pow-
ered calculators whose dimensions were constrained only by the
size of the keypad and the display. What Kutt wanted to build
was a “personal computer” - an inexpensive, small, digital,
general-purpose computer owned and operated by an individ-
ual. These personal computers would make the individual an
even freer person, with computing - not merely calculating -
power at his or her disposal, whether in an office, a research
lab, or a classroom.
At the time of Kutt's meeting with Ramer in Toronto, the world
of computing consisted exclusively of large and expensive main-
frame computers and smaller, but also expensive, minicomput-
ers. In 1971, there were 3,548 computers of all types in Canada:
1,814 in the province of Ontario, 764 in Quebec, and only four
of the early 1970s were never intended to function as personal
computers - in fact, in those days, the expression “personal
computer” wasn't even an academic term. Computer services
were intended to support not individual use but the computa-
tional needs of governmental agencies, corporations, and re-
