Inventing the PC - Inventing the PC - page 27

microprocessor-powered consumer electronics market, which
would soon be full of FRED -like offerings. Since 1977, a fast-
growing number of both well-established and new manufactur-
ers of consumer electronics products had introduced scores of
low-cost FRED -like microcomputers for home and educational
applications. As predicted by Weisbecker, they were useful and
very popular. As an example, the sales of the VIC -20, a low-
cost computer introduced by Commodore in 1980, reached the
one million mark in early 1983, when Commodore was ship-
ping 100,000 units a month.
But more than a decade earlier, in 1971, Kutt embarked on his
microcomputer project with a vision worlds apart from Weis-
becker's FRED philosophy. Kutt didn't intend to develop yet
another educational toy for demonstrating the principles of
digital logic, or to manufacture a minimum-cost computer for
a limited range of applications at home or classroom. He wasn't
into hobby computing, either, despite the computer hobbyists'
movement, which had been growing in strength since Stephen
B. Gray founded the Amateur Computer Society ( ACS ) in 1966
and began publishing the ACS Newsletter for computer enthusi-
asts and experimenters.
Instead, Kutt wanted to build a practical, versatile, and in-
expensive desktop computer to satisfy the computational needs
of individuals in business, research, and education, at a fraction
of the cost charged by typical time-sharing computer service
companies. In his opinion, low-cost microcomputers, such as
the one he intended to build, would allow the cost-effective use
of computers in many new fields of application. And, finally, a
user-friendly and easy-to-comprehend computer operating en-
vironment was as critical to his project as small size and battery
operation was to the pocket calculator.
While Kutt's concept of an APL computer looked sound
from a marketing point of view, turning it into an economic-