As mentioned in an earlier post, not too long ago, my family and I spend a weekend in the lovely harbour town of Hoorn. One of the museums we visited was the Museum of the Twentieth Century. The museum’s collection was a blast from the past for us adults and ancient history for the kids. The halls showed living room setups from pre-war times with household appliances that my mother-in-law recognised, as well as video recorders, pick-ups and even pre-smartphone mobile phones. I saw a Sony Ericsson CMD J5, the first type of phone from Sony I’ve ever owned.

At the end of that particular hall, there was a big room, the walls of which had shelves with lots of computers and consoles from the seventies until the first half of the nineties. There were Philips MSX computers of course, I saw a Holborn 9100 and one computer that I hadn’t seen in real life before, but that I immediately recognised from a book that I’ve had since the eighties.

BASIC and home computers, Kluwer (1980), cover

The book is called BASIC en huiscomputers (BASIC and home computers) by Kasper Boon and was published in 1980 by Kluwer, a Dutch/Belgian publisher of business books at the time. I must have bought the book second-hand. The computer I saw in Hoorn is the one in the middle on the picture in the cover page, an ITT 2020, an Apple II clone for the European market with a PAL TV output.

The ITT 2020 wasn’t sold until I was three years old, and I wasn’t made aware of computers in general before 1982 anyway, so the machines in that picture are all unfamiliar to me. But look how glorious they all are. These keyboards each breath seriousness, while the wild use of colours project creativity and playfulness.

I’ve never owned any of them, nor do I have the ambition (or the room) to try and collect them now, but of most of them there are photos in the book, so I realised I should be able to identify them. At least, since the book is from 1980, it’s safe to say all those computers are from before that year.

A Tandy TRS 80 setup that means business on page 26

Indeed, on page 26 in the book I find a picture of a desk with a monitor, a printer and a computer that has the same pair of white keys in the lower right of its keyboard, so it must be a Tandy TRS 80 (1977), in the very lower right corner of the cover picture. The picture actually serves just as an illustration in the book. The text doesn’t mention it. Its caption explains that the module under the desk is a floppy disk unit.

Another computer in the cover picture that I could identify by its photo in the book was the colourful machine above the TRS-80, a Compucolor II (1976). From its caption, I learn that it came complete with a colour monitor with a built-in floppy drive.

The one right above the ITT 2020 is an Rockwell AIM 65 (1976). The book mentions only its built-in printer. Indeed, it looks a bit like a cash register. Right below the ITT 2020 is a Texas Instruments TI 99/4 (1979). The book calls it a home computer and mentions that it uses cassettes (cartridges) with ‘ready-made’ software. One such cassette is visible in the lower right of the picture below. It is also possible to connect a cassette tape recorder.

Daddy having fun with a Texas Instruments TI 99/4. Note the cartridge.

The white computer in the lower left corner of the cover picture seems to be a Siemens PC-100 (1980), which apparently was a Siemens variant on the Rockwell AIM 65. The book shows a picture as an illustration without any explanation.

Sadly, I couldn’t find any picture inside the book of the beige computer with the black keys at the top left of the cover. If you, dear reader, have any idea, I’d love to know.

But the absolute most gorgeous machine in the picture, right of the Compuculor II, must be the blue Data General Dasher D2 (1977). It isn’t mentioned in the book at all, but the brand and type names are readable in the cover picture. According to that Wikipedia link, what we see here wasn’t a home computer but a professonal high quality terminal keyboard that even influenced WordPerfect design. I can see eight function keys at the top, two key islands to separate cursor and numeric keys, and many more useful keys.

“After the rapid developments of consumer calculators, we are now no-doubt entering a similar age of home or personal computers,” the author predicts in his preface. He wasn’t wrong.