November 1962: 'Personal computer'

From a November 2 story by The Associated Press:

   WASHINGTON -- Pocket-size computers may eliminate the housewife's weekly shopping list. Electronic communication would tell the store in advance what she needed. She would simply pick up the bundles.
   This was envisioned today by Dr. John W. Mauchly, inventor of some of the original room-size computers, who has developed one the size of a suitcase and is now working on a pocket variety.
   Dr. Mauchly, here to address a meeting of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers, said that in a decade or so everyone would have his own computer. Data pertinent to the individual and his problems would be stored in the computers' wafer-thin memory cells. ...
   The inventor's original computers weighed nearly 30 tons and occupied 15,000 feet of floor space. His latest is a portable 50-pound one of suitcase size.
   The present emphasis on miniaturizing components of missile and spacecraft will inevitably result in developing small, inexpensive computers within the financial reach of almost everyone, Dr. Mauchly said.
   "There is no reason to suppose the average boy or girl cannot be master of a personal computer," he said.
* Mauchly entry from National Inventors Hall of Fame: @

* "John W. Mauchly and the Development of the ENIAC computer" (University of Pennsylvania): @

* Mauchly biography (University of St. Andrews, Scotland): @

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