Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation

Description

Home Computers showcases the quirky and characterful beginnings of a commercial product that would come to unite the globe: the personal computer. As so much technology is forgotten once it is superseded, this is a celebration of machines, industrial design and techno-utopianism of an era in the not-so-distant past. Conceived as a visual sourcebook of the most popular, most powerful and most idiosyncratic computers to grace our workspaces, this timely publication offers a reflection on how far we've come and a nostalgic look at a time when digital worlds could be contained in a box and turned off, rather than ever-present in our lives. Home Computers opens with a scene-setting retrospective by computer and gaming writer Alex Wiltshire. The book's heart is a series of specially commissioned photographs that capture details of switches and early user-interface design, letterforms and logos, and the quirks that set one computer off from another. Images are complemented by a potted history of each device, the inventors or personalities behind it, and its innovations and influences.

Alex Wiltshire is a writer and consultant for videogames, design and technology. He is the author of the bestselling book Minecraft Blockopedia, and the editor of Britsoft: An Oral History. Previously editor of Edge, he has also written for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, PC Gamer and Eurogamer.

'A world away from the devices used today, the computers in the book illustrate the rapid march of technology' - Observer 'A definite page-turner' - Custom PC