The TV Typewriter, designed by Don
Lancaster, provided the first display of alphanumeric information on an
ordinary television set. It used $120 worth of electronics components,
as outlined in the September 1973 issue of Radio Electronics. The
original design included two memory boards and could generate and store
512 characters as 16 lines of 32 characters. A 90-minute cassette tape
provided supplementary storage for about 100 pages of text.
The Micral was the earliest commercial,
non-kit personal computer based on a micro-processor, the Intel 8008.
Thi Truong developed the computer and Philippe Kahn the software.
Truong, founder and president of the French company R2E, created the
Micral as a replacement for minicomputers in situations that didn´t
require high performance. Selling for $1,750, the Micral never
penetrated the U.S. market. In 1979, Truong sold Micral to Bull.
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
