How nine of the world’s largest tech companies got started

Many of today’s largest tech companies, such as Sony, Nokia, Samsung and IBM, have been around for a very long time (some since the 1800s). Their beginnings were often very humble, and it is fascinating to look back and see how they actually got started.

We selected nine of the world’s oldest and largest tech companies to see how and when they got started. As you will notice, many were initially doing completely different things from what they are doing today and have been active in a lot of different business areas.

Nokia – started in 1865

Nokia was founded by Fredrik Idestam in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill in south-western Finland. It was later relocated to the town Nokia where the company got its name. The name Nokia is an old Finnish word for a dark, furry animal (such as the sable).

In the beginning of the 20th century Finnish Rubber Works established its factories and began using Nokia as its brand. The companies merged in 1967 as Nokia Corporation, which went on to produce paper products, bicycle and car tires, footwear, personal computers, communication cables and televisions.

It wasn’t until 1987 that Nokia introduced one of the world’s first handheld phones, the Mobira Cityman 900. It “only” weighed 0.8 kg and cost €4,650.

Old Nokia footwear ad. (From Nokia.)

Sony – started in 1945

Sony started out as a radio repair shop in a bombed-out building in Tokyo right after World War II. The founder, Masaru Ibuka, was joined the next year by Akio Morita and together they founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation).

The company tried on various acronyms and names, like Totsuko and Tokyo Teletech before finally settling for Sony in 1955. It is a mix of the Latin word “sonus” (sound) and the English word “sonny” (little boy).

Sony built Japan’s first tape recorder (the G-Type) and also the country’s first commercially produced transistor radio.

Japan’s first magnetic tape recorder, the G-Type (1950). (From Digital World Tokyo.)

IBM – started in 1896

IBM got its start under the name Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. Even before starting the company, the founder, Herman Hollerith, had filed a series of patents regarding punched card data processing.

A merger with two other companies later changed the name of the company to Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation. It wasn’t until 1924 that the company changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM.

The early years included a wide range of products such as employee time-keeping systems, weighing scales, automatic meat slicers and punched card equipment. During World War II IBM also produced weapons and its punch-card machines were used for calculations in the development of the first atomic bombs.

Tabulating Machine Corporation plant. (From Wikipedia.)

Samsung – started in 1938

Samsung was founded by Lee Byung-chul in 1938 as Samsung Store, a trading company in Daegu, (South) Korea, selling fish, vegetables and fruit to China. During the Communist invasion in 1950 his inventories were damaged and he was forced to leave and start over again in 1951, this time in Seoul.

In 1953 Lee opened a sugar refinery and founded his philosophy of making Samsung the leader in each industry he entered. Samsung later moved into several different businesses fields, providing things like insurances, department stores, radio and television stations, engineering and electronics.

Samsung even started a daily newspaper back in 1965. It is currently one of the three largest in Korea, although no longer affiliated with Samsung.

Samsung’s founder, Lee Byung-chul. (From an article about Korean Chaebols.)

Nintendo – started in 1889

Nintendo was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi in Kyoto. He started out with producing handmade Hanafuda cards, which is a type of playing cards. The name Nintendo supposedly means “Leave luck to Heaven” when translated from Japanese to English.

Before becoming a video game company Nintendo tried several niche businesses, setting up a love hotel chain, a taxi company, a TV network and a food company for selling instant rice.

Nintendo Hanafuda card including the Nintendo logo at the time. (From Wikipedia.)

Hewlett-Packard – started in 1935

Hewlett-Packard (HP) was founded in a garage in 1935 by William Hewlett and David Packard. At first they couldn’t decide if the company should be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett, but after a coin toss that Packard won he decided on Hewlett-Packard.

Their first product was a precision audio oscillator. One of their earliest customers was The Walt Disney Company which bought eight oscillators to use in certifying surround sound systems installed in theaters for the movie Fantasia.

HP continued to make electronic test equipment and later also experimented with using their equipment together with DEC minicomputers. They ultimately decided that it would be easier to make their own computers than dealing with DEC.

In 1968 HP launched what is known as one of the first personal computers, although they called it a desktop calculator because according to Bill Hewlett: “If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers’ computer gurus because it didn’t look like an IBM.”

The original protype for HP’s audio oscillator. (From HP.)

Motorola – started in 1928

Motorola was founded in Chicago as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928 by Paul and Joseph Galvin. The first product was a battery eliminator for radios.

The name Motorola was adopted in 1930 when the company started to produce car radios. The name is a combination of “motor” and “Victrola.” (The Victrola was an early record player.)

Motorola has provided radio equipment for most NASA space-flights including the 1969 moon landing.

Motorola log from way back. (From World’s Best Logos.)

Siemens – started in 1847

Siemens was founded in 1847 by Werner von Siemens but was then called Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske. The company’s first invention was based on the telegraph but used a needle to point to a sequence of letters instead of using Morse code.

In 1867 Siemens completed the monumental Indo-European telegraph line between Calcutta and London. Siemens also powered the world’s first electric street lighting in the town of Godalming, UK, using a watermill. They later also diversified into electric trains and light bulbs, among other things.

The Siemens & Halske Electric Railroad, shown at the Berlin Industrial Exhibition in 1879. (From Some Early Traction History.)

Canon – started in 1930

The company that would become Canon was founded by Goro Yoshida and Saburo Uchida (Yoshida’s brother-in-law) and was funded by a close friend, Takeshi Mitarai. The goal of Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory, as the company was initially called, was to develop a 35mm rangefinder camera.

In 1934 the company started marketing a camera called the Kwanon, but none of the Kwanon cameras ever reached the market. The name Kwanon (and its later spelling, Kannon) was taken from a famous Buddhist (bodhisattva). The year after, the company started using the product label Canon instead, which was more modern-sounding and also means “authoritative scriptures” in English.

The Hansa Canon camera, released in 1936, was the company’s first success. The camera used a lens from the predecessor of Nikon (Japan Optical Industries).

In 1937 the company name was changed to Canon.

The 1934 Kwanon logo. (From Wikipedia.)

We hope you enjoyed this look back at the early history of these huge tech companies. It is interesting to think that every year, companies get started that have the potential to become huge in the future, just like the ones here have risen heads and shoulders above the vast majority of companies that started around the same time.

How Google celebrated science in 2009

Google often modifies its logo to reflect current events and celebrate anniversaries of famous people and accomplishments. This post collects all the science- and tech-related anniversaries and events that Google celebrated with a special logo last year.

Johann Philipp Reis

(1834 – 1874) Self-taught German scientist and inventor. He built an early telephone, today referred to as the Reis Telephone, which he demonstrated in 1861. Thomas Edison based his work on the carbon microphone on Reis’s research, and has acknowledged Reis as the first inventor of a telephone.

Shown on the Google homepage in Germany on January 7, 2009.

Inō Tadataka

(1745 – 1818) Japanese surveyor and cartographer. He is famous for completing the first map of Japan done with modern surveying techniques. It was a huge task. He spent the last 17 years of his life mapping out the entire coastline of Japan and some of its interior, spending 3,737 days doing measurements.

Shown on the Google homepage in Japan on February 11, 2009.

Charles Darwin

(1809 – 1882) An English naturalist. He is of course most famous for coming up with the theory of evolution and natural selection, published in his On the Origin of Species (1859).

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on February 12, 2009.

Unix Time 1234567890

The Unix operating systems represent date and time internally with a single number, and on February 13 at 23:31:30 UTC that number ticked over to 1234567890. This was celebrated by tech geeks around the Web, including Google.

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on February 14, 2009.

Giovanni Schiaparelli

(1835 – 1910) Italian astronomer and science historian. He is most famous for his studies of Mars, where he named the “seas” and “continents” of the planet, and the linear structures he called “canalis”, which means channels. However, the word was mistranslated to “canals” (an artificial construction instead of something natural), inspiring widespread speculation about intelligent life on Mars.

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on March 14, 2009.

Mimar Sinan

(1489 – 1588) Chief architect and civil engineer of the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey). During 50 years he was responsible for either supervising or constructing all the major buildings in the Ottoman Empire and has more than 300 major structures credited to his name.

Shown on the Google homepage in Turkey on April 15, 2009.

Christiaan Huygens

(1629 – 1695) Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist, horologist as well as an early writer of science fiction. He studied the rings of Saturn, discovered Titan (one of Saturn’s moons), invented the pendulum clock, argued that light consists of waves, discovered the centrifugal force and numerous other accomplishments, including playing an important role in the development of modern calculus. Huygens is sometimes called the first theoretical physicist.

Shown on the Google homepage in the Netherlands on April 16, 2009.

Zu Chongzhi

(429 – 500) Chinese mathematician and astronomer. He pioneered a number of mathematical techniques that made it possible to construct very accurate calendars and other astronomical calculations (for example he calculated the distance to Jupiter, correctly). He made a significant number of mathematical contributions, including the closest approximation of Pi for over 900 years and a formula for finding the volume of a sphere.

Shown on the Google homepage in China on April 20, 2009.

Tomitaro Makino

(1862 – 1957) Japanese botanist. He is often referred to as the Father of Japanese Botany and was one of the first to perform extensive classification of Japanese plants using the at the time new system created by the Swedish Carl von Linné (Carl Linnaeus). He documented over 50,000 specimens. His birthday is called “Botany Day” in Japan.

Shown on the Google homepage in Japan on April 24, 2009.

Samuel Morse

(1791 – 1872) American painter that later in life became dedicated to develop a means of rapid long-distance communication after his wife had become sick and passed away while he was away from home. He co-developed the single-wire telegraph system and Morse code, which also bears his name.

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on April 27, 2009.

Kew Gardens, 250th anniversary

The Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew consist of 121 hectares of gardens and botanical glasshouses southwest of London, England. They contain the world’s largest collection of living plants and employs more than 650 scientists and other staff. Kew Gardens have more than 30,000 kinds of living plants and a herbarium with over seven million preserved plant specimens. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Shown on the Google homepage in the UK on May 5, 2009.

Alexander Popov

(1859 – 1906) Russian physicist. He was the first to demonstrate the practical application of electromagnetic waves and continued the research performed by other radio pioneers such as Heinrich Hertz, enabling long-distance radio communication with a radio receiver (and lightning detector) of his own creation.

Shown on the Google homepage in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus on May 7, 2009.

The Darwinius masillae fossil

Discovered in 1983 in Germany, the fossil of the Darwinius masillae that has affectionately been dubbed Ida has been dated as being 47 million years old. It’s the only one of its kind that has been found. On May 19, 2009, new findings were published that referred to Ida as “the missing link” in the primate lineage and human evolution.

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on May 20, 2009.

Chen Jingrun

(1933 – 1996) Chinese mathematician. He made significant contributions to number theory and is ranked as one of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century.

Shown on the Google homepage in China on May 22, 2009.

Tetris, 25th anniversary

The video game designed and programmed by Alexey Pazhitnov in 1984. Perhaps not quite as “sciency” as the other selections we included here, but considering how iconic it was and how loved by tech geeks it is, we included it anyway.

Shown on the Google homepage in selected countries on June 6, 2009.

Nikola Tesla

(1856 – 1943) Serbian inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. Born in the Austrian Empire (now Croatia) he later migrated to the United States. He is one of the most famous scientists in human history, known among other things for his pioneering work with commercial electricity, electromagnetism, and numerous other discoveries.

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on July 10, 2009.

The Moon landing, 40th anniversary

On the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing, Google put up this nifty logo to celebrate the first manned mission to land on the Moon.

Shown on the Google homepage in selected countries on July 20, 2009.

Hans Christian Ørsted

(1777 – 1851) Danish physicist and chemist. He is most famous for discovering that electric currents induce magnetic fields, a fundamental aspect of electromagnetism. He was also the first to produce pure aluminium, a notable contribution to the field of chemistry.

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on August 14, 2009.

Galileo’s first telescope, 400th anniversary

Few have had a larger impact on the history of science than Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642). He has been called the “father of modern observational astronomy,” the “father of science” and the “father of modern science”. He created what is commonly known as the Galilean telescope, which allowed him to observe the heavens with up to 30 times magnification. Galileo spent the last part of his life in house arrest by the Catholic Church since the Inquisition had found him “vehemently suspect of heresy” after he had defended the heliocentric worldview in his work (that Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun, instead of everything revolving around Earth).

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on August 25, 2009.

Invention of the bar code

The first use of bar codes was to label railroad cars in the ‘60s. However, they didn’t really become popular until they started being used to automate supermarket checkout systems in the ‘70s. The original bar code design was inspired by Morse code, but with the lines and dots drawn out as bars.

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on October 7, 2009.

NASA finds water on the moon

On November 13, 2009, NASA reported that they had found traces of water on the Moon (often referred to as Lunar water).

Shown worldwide on the Google homepage on November 13, 2009.

Qian Xuesen

(1911 – 2009) Chinese scientist. He made important contributions to the missile and space programs of both China and the United States.

Shown on the Google homepage in China on December 11, 2009.

Discovery of the Aztec Sun Stone

Discovered and excavated in Mexico City in 1790, the large sculpture is a representation of the Aztec calendar. It measures about 3.6 meters (12 feet) in diameter and weighs 24 tons.

Shown on the Google homepage in Mexico on December 17, 2009.

Jan Evangelista Purkyně

(1787 – 1869) Czech anatomist and physiologist. He is most famous for his discovery of Purkinje cells (named after guess who?) in 1837. They are large neurons with lots of branching dendrites found in the cerebellum of the human brain (and look pretty much like the Google logo below). He also introduced the scientific terms plasma (blood plasma) and protoplasm.

Shown on the Google homepage in the Czech Republic on December 18, 2009.

Overall, it seems that Google has really ramped up the number and variety of custom Google logos compared to previous years. These were just the ones about tech and science. You can find more over at Google’s Holiday Logos page.

The history of Data Storage

Nowadays we are used to having hundreds of gigabytes of storage capacity in our computers. Even tiny MP3 players and other handheld devices usually have several gigabytes of storage. This was pure science fiction only a few decades ago. For example, the first hard disk drive to have gigabyte capacity was as big as a refrigerator, and that was in 1980. Not so long ago!


The Selectron tube

The Selectron tube had a capacity of 256 to 4096 bits (32 to 512 bytes). The 4096-bit Selectron was 10 inches long and 3 inches wide. Originally developed in 1946, the memory storage device proved expensive and suffered from production problems, so it never became a success.



Above: The 1024-bit Selectron.


Punch cards

Early computers often used punch cards for input both of programs and data. Punch cards were in common use until the mid-1970s. It should be noted that the use of punch cards predates computers. They were used as early as 1725 in the textile industry (for controlling mechanized textile looms).




Above: Card from a Fortran program: Z(1) = Y + W(1)



Above left: Punch card reader. Above right: Punch card writer.


Punched tape

Same as with punch cards, punched tape was originally pioneered by the textile industry for use with mechanized looms. For computers, punch tape could be used for data input but also as a medium to output data. Each row on the tape represented one character.




Above: 8-level punch tape (8 holes per row).


Magnetic drum memory

Invented all the way back in 1932 (in Austria), it was widely used in the 1950s and 60s as the main working memory of computers. In the mid-1950s, magnetic drum memory had a capacity of around 10 kB.



Above left: The magnetic Drum Memory of the UNIVAC computer. Above right: A 16-inch-long drum from the IBM 650 computer. It had 40 tracks, 10 kB of storage space, and spun at 12,500 revolutions per minute.


The hard disk drive

The first hard disk drive was the IBM Model 350 Disk File that came with the IBM 305 RAMAC computer in 1956. It had 50 24-inch discs with a total storage capacity of 5 million characters (just under 5 MB).



Above: IBM Model 350, the first-ever hard disk drive.

The first hard drive to have more than 1 GB in capacity was the IBM 3380 in 1980 (it could store 2.52 GB). It was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (250 kg), and the price when it was introduced ranged from $81,000 to $142,400.



Above left: A 250 MB hard disk drive from 1979. Above right: The IBM 3380 from 1980, the first gigabyte-capacity hard disk drive.


The Laserdisc

We mention it here mainly because it was the precursor to the CD-ROM and other optical storage solutions. It was mainly used for movies. The first commercially available laserdisc system was available on the market late in 1978 (then called Laser Videodisc and the more funkily branded DiscoVision) and were 11.81 inches (30 cm) in diameter. The discs could have up to 60 minutes of audio/video on each side. The first laserdiscs had entirely analog content. The basic technology behind laserdiscs was invented all the way back in 1958.



Above left: A Laserdisc next to a regular DVD. Above right: Another Laserdisc.


The floppy disc

The diskette, or floppy disk (named so because they were flexible), was invented by IBM and in common use from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. The first floppy disks were 8 inches, and later in came 5.25 and 3.5-inch formats. The first floppy disk, introduced in 1971, had a capacity of 79.7 kB, and was read-only. A read-write version came a year later.



Above left: An 8-inch floppy and floppy drive next to a regular 3.5-inch floppy disk. Above right: The convenience of easily removable storage media.


Magnetic tape

Magnetic tape was first used for data storage in 1951. The tape device was called UNISERVO and was the main I/O device on the UNIVAC I computer. The effective transfer rate for the UNISERVO was about 7,200 characters per second. The tapes were metal and 1200 feet long (365 meters) and therefore very heavy.



Above left: The row of tape drives for the UNIVAC I computer. Above right: The IBM 3410 Magnetic Tape Subsystem, introduced in 1971.

And of course, we can’t mention magnetic tape without also mentioning the standard compact cassette, which was a popular way of data storage for personal computers in the late 70s and 80s. Typical data rates for compact cassettes were 2,000 bit/s. You could store about 660 kB per side on a 90-minute tape.



Above left: The standard compact cassette. Above right: The Commodore Datassette is sure to bring up fond memories for people who grew up in the 80s.

Picture sources:

The Selectron. The punch card. The punch card reader and writer. Punched tape 1 and 2. UNIVAC magnetic drum. IBM 650 computer magnetic drum. The IBM Model 350 Disk File. 250 MB hard drisk drive from 1979. The IBM 3380. Laserdisc vs DVD. Held Laserdisc. 8-inch floppy drive. 8-inch floppy in use. UNISERVO and UNIVAC I. The IBM 3410. The compact cassette. The Datassette.

The history of Computer hardware

We all use personal computers and we all take them for granted in our everyday lives. It’s easy to forget that PCs have only been around for a couple of decades, and initially were nowhere near the powerhouses we have on our desks today.

The first computer mouse

The first computer mouse was invented in 1963 by Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute. (He is also one of the inventors of hypertext.) The first mouse used two wheels positioned at a 90-degree angle to each other to keep track of the movement (see picture below). The ball mouse wasn’t invented until 1972, and the optical mouse was invented circa 1980 although it didn’t come to popular use until much later.
Douglas Engelbart never received any royalties for his invention and his patent had run out by the time the mouse became commonplace in the era of home PCs.


Above: The first mouse. To the right you can see the wheels it used for movement and positioning.

The first trackball

The trackball was actually invented 11 years BEFORE the mouse, in 1952. It was invented by Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff as part of a computerized battlefield information system called DATAR, initiated by the Canadian Navy. It used a standard five-pin bowling ball as its trackball, which is smaller than the more common 10-pin bowling ball.


Above: The first trackball, bowling ball and all.

The first portable computer

Well, perhaps that should be “movable” computer… The IBM 5100 Portable Computer was introduced in 1975, weighed 25 kg (55 lb), was the size of a small suitcase and needed external power to operate. It held everything in the same unit, packing in a processor, ROM (several hundreds of KB) and RAM (16-64 KB), a five-inch CRT display, keyboard and a tape drive, which was an amazing feat at the time. It also came with built-in BASIC and/or APL. The different models of the IBM 5100 sold for $8,975 – $19,975.


Above: The IBM 5100 Portable Computer.

The first laptop computer

The first laptop computer (or notebook) was the Grid Compass 1100 (called the GRiD) and was designed in 1979 by a British industrial designer, Bill Moggridge. The computer didn’t start selling until 1982, then featuring a 320×200 screen, an Intel 8086 processor, 340 KB of magnetic bubble memory (a now obsolete, non-volatile memory type) and a 1200 bps modem. It weighed 5 kg (11 lb) and cost $8-10,000. The GRiD was mainly used by NASA and the US military.


Above left: Closeup of the Grid Compass 1100. Above right: NASA astronaut posing with the GRiD in space (that’s Spock on the screen.)

The first IBM PC

The IBM Personal Computer was introduced in 1981 as the IBM 5150. The platform became so pervasive in the 80s that although the term “personal computer” had been in use since the early 70s, a PC became synonymous with an IBM PC-compatible computer.
During its development, the IBM 5150 had been internally referred to as “Project Chess” and was created by a team of 12 people headed by Don Estridge and Larry Potter. To speed up development and cut costs, IBM had decided to use off-the-shelf parts, something that they normally wouldn’t do.
The first IBM PC had an Intel 8088 processor, 64 KB of RAM (extendible to 256 KB), a floppy disk drive (which could be used to boot the computer with a rebranded version of MS-DOS (PC-DOS)) and a CGA or monochrome video card. The machine also had a version of Microsoft BASIC in ROM. On the first IBM PC the optional 10 MB hard disk drive could only be installed if the original power supply was replaced (the original one was too weak).


Above: The first IBM Personal Computer, the IBM 5150.

The first Apple computer

The first Apple personal computers (Apple I) were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. The Apple I went on sale in 1976 for the price of $666.66. Only about 200 units were produced. The Apple I was basically just a motherboard with a processor, a total of 8KB of RAM, a display interface and some additional functionality. To have a working computer, the buyer would have to add a power supply, a keyboard and a display (and a case to keep mount it all in).


Above left: An Apple I computer. Above right: This was the Apple I, essentially a motherboard.

The first RAM

Arguably the first (writable) random access memory was Magnetic Core Memory (also called Ferrite-Core Memory) and was invented in 1951 as a result of work done by An Wang at Harvard University’s Computation Lab and Jay Forrester at MIT.
Core memory was a family of related technologies that used the magnetic properties of materials to give them a similar functionality to transistors. They stored their information using the polarity of tiny, magnetic ceramic rings with wires threaded through them. Unlike today’s RAM, core memory could keep its information even after the power was turned off.
Core memory was common until it was replaced by integrated silicon RAM chips in the 1970s. The “core” in core memory is why a memory dump is called a “core dump” even today.


Above left: Closeup of core memory. Above right: The core memory plane in the picture is 16×16 cm (6.3×6.3 inches), holding 128×128 bits (2048 byte).

The first hard disk drive

The IBM Model 350 Disk File was the first hard disk drive and was part of the IBM 305 RAMAC computer that IBM started delivering in 1956 (mainly intended for business accounting). It had 50 24-inch discs that together could store about 4.4 MB of data. The Model 350 spun at 1200 rpm, had a data transfer rate of 8,800 characters per second and an access time of approximately one second.


Above: The first hard disk drive, IBM Model 350.

The first laser printer

The laser printer was invented by Gary Starkweather at XEROX in 1969. His initial prototype was a modified laser copier where he had disabled the imaging system and introduced a spinning drum with eight mirrored sides. The first commercial implementation of a laser printer didn’t happen until IBM released the IBM model 3800 in 1976. It could pretty much fill up a room on its own.


Above: The IBM 3800, the first commercial laser printer.

The first web server

And since the Web is such an integral part of today’s computer experience, we couldn’t help but include another first: The first web server was a NeXT workstation that Tim Berners-Lee used when he invented the World Wide Web at CERN. The first web page was put online on August 6, 1991.
The computer had a note on it that said, “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!” Understandable, considering that if you had shut it down in the early days you would have shut down the entire WWW. :P


Above: The web server that powered the first web pages on the WWW. Note the sticker with the warning to not turn it off.
It’s amazing how much has happened in the PC industry in just a few decades. Just imagine what things will be like 30-40 years from now…