30 May 1930: The Dede

A year before his death, Thomas Edison finally saw his dream fulfilled; the Desktop Eddie, (popularly known as the Dede), a difference engine that was the size of a desk and only weighed 400 pounds. The Dede became the first difference engine small and cheap enough for sale to the general public, and so the Dede opened the door to an information revolution in the 30s.

In reality, 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 and ould 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.