Kenbak-1


The Kenbak-1 is considered by many to be the world's first "Personal Computer." The Computer History Museum granted it this designation when they were still located in Boston in 1986. More specifically, the machine represents the first commercially available Von Neumann (stored program) computing device intended and priced for personal use.

John V. Blankenbaker designed the Kenbak-1 and marketed in the pages of Scientific American in 1971. The machine's name was taken from the middle of John's last name.

The Kenbak-1 was designed in 1970 and

pre-dated microprocessors. The Intel 4004 (the worlds first microprocessor) was introduced in 1971. Instead of being microprocessor based the Kenbak-1 was built almost entirely from TTL components.

Unlike many earlier machines and calculating engines, the Kenbak-1 was a true stored-program computer that offered 256 bytes of memory, a wide variety of operations and a speed equivalent to nearly 1MHz.

Approximately 40 of these machines were built and sold before they were discontinued. The world just wasn't quite ready for personal computing and the Kenbak-1 lacked some critical capabilities (such as expandability and I/O) that were needed to foster the revolution. 14 are currently known to exist with 7 of them located in the Computer Museum of Nova Scotia.

The Kenbak-1 in my collection is a modern replica built from a kit which is functionally and in most ways physically identical to the original Kenbak-1 Computer. You can find more information on the kit and its creator at Kenbak Kit website.

Frode van der Meeren from Norway wrote Kenbak-1 emulator, which can be downloaded here.