28 May 1899: The Mandarin

Thomas Edison announced the new Eddie for a new century, the Mandarin. The 20th century line of Eddies was named after orange varieties, and proved to be very popular; the cost was down to that of a new car, and they were the size of a large car. Edison vowed that with the Orange line of Eddies, by the end of the next century, an Eddie would be the size of a desk. Skeptics abounded.

The first computer the size of a desk probably was the 1939 ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer). It weighed 700 pounds, was packed with 300 vacuum tubes and a mile of wire. Could do about one operation every 15 seconds.

By the late 1960s, the 1965 IBM 1130 was a best-selling computer the size of a desk. It typically had a CPU with 8Kwords or 16Kwords of 3.2-microsecond (280kHz) core memory, a single disk storage device, a 1442 card read-punch unit, and an 1132 line printer.