From Popular Mechanics: 1954 Mock-Up of a 'Home Computer'
Netlore Archive: Emailed image allegedly taken from a 1954 issue of Popular Mechanics shows the RAND Corporation's conception of what a home computer would look like in 2004
Description: Emailed image
Circulating since: Oct. 2004
Status: Fake / False
Email example contributed by B. Dunlop, 23 November 2004:
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Subject: FW: 1954 Popular Mechanics In 1954, Popular Mechanics showed its readers what a home computer might look like this year (2004). |
Comments: Albeit significantly doctored, what you are actually looking at in the image above is a full-scale mock-up of the maneuvering room of a U.S. nuclear submarine, not a "home computer" as envisioned in 1954
The original picture, snapped by an unknown photographer at a 2000-2003 Smithsonian Institution exhibit called "Fast Attacks and Boomers: Submarines of the Cold War," was chosen to be the fodder for a Fark.com Photoshop contest in September 2004. This altered image, including a new caption invented for the occasion, was one entry in that contest.
The caption reads:
Scientists from the RAND corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "Home Computer" could look like in the year 2004. However, the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the FORTRAN language, the computer will be easy to use.
Which is just silly, if you think about it. Why would engineers waste their valuable time building a mock-up of a home computer that no average person could afford? Nor is there anything "easy to use" about a teletype interface or the FORTRAN programming language.
Given that even the smallest functioning computers in the 1950s were big enough to fill a master bedroom, no one at the time could have envisioned them becoming home appliances. Remington Rand's UNIVAC I, the very first commercial computer made in the United States, weighed 29,000 pounds and occupied over 350 square feet of floor space. Like other computer models of the time, it didn't have a video monitor, let alone a steering wheel.
Update: Popular Mechanics offered its own debunking of the falsified photo in its December 2004 issue: "Fictitious '54 Home Computer."
Sources and further reading:
Unstoppable Rise of the Home Computer
BBC News, 9 February 2004UNIVAC I
Wikipedia article on Remington Rand's first commercial computerFast Attacks and Boomers: Submarines of the Cold War
Smithosonian Institution WebsitePhotoshop this Mock-Up of a Submarine's Maneuvering Room
Remnants of the Fark.com Photoshop contest
Last updated: 03/03/08
