Home Computers: 100 Icons That Defined a Digital Generation

A celebration of the early years of the digital revolution, when computing power was deployed in a beige box on your desk.

Today, people carry powerful computers in our pockets and call them "phones." A generation ago, people were amazed that the processing power of a mainframe computer could be contained in a beige box on a desk. This book is a celebration of those early home computers, with specially commissioned new photographs of 100 vintage computers and a generous selection of print advertising, product packaging, and instruction manuals. Readers can recapture the glory days of fondly remembered (or happily forgotten) machines including the Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple Lisa, and Mattel Aquarius--traces of the techno-utopianism of the not-so-distant past.

Home Computers showcases mass-market success stories, rarities, prototypes, one-offs, and never-before-seen specimens. The heart of the book is a series of artful photographs that capture idiosyncratic details of switches and plugs, early user-interface designs, logos, and labels. After a general scene-setting retrospective, the book proceeds computer by computer, with images of each device accompanied by a short history of the machine, its inventors, its innovations, and its influence. Readers who inhabit today's always-on, networked, inescapably connected world will be charmed by this visit to an era when the digital revolution could be powered down every evening.

這本書是對數位革命早期的慶祝，當時的計算能力被部署在你桌上的米色盒子中。

如今，人們將強大的電腦放在口袋裡，稱之為「手機」。一代人前，人們對於一台大型機的處理能力能夠被包含在桌上的米色盒子中感到驚訝。這本書是對那些早期家用電腦的慶祝，其中包含了100台經過特別委託拍攝的老舊電腦的照片，以及大量的印刷廣告、產品包裝和使用手冊。讀者可以重溫那些令人懷念（或者幸福地遺忘）的榮耀時光，包括Commodore 64、TRS-80、Apple Lisa和Mattel Aquarius等機器，這些都是不久前的科技烏托邦主義的痕跡。

《家用電腦》展示了大眾市場的成功故事、稀有物品、原型、獨一無二的機器和從未見過的樣本。本書的核心是一系列藝術性的照片，捕捉了開關和插頭的特異細節、早期使用者界面設計、標誌和標籤。在一個總體的回顧之後，本書按照每台電腦進行介紹，每個設備的圖片都附有簡短的機器歷史、發明者、創新和影響。生活在今天總是連接在線、無法逃脫的網絡世界中的讀者將會被這次回顧數位革命可以在每天晚上關機的時代所吸引。