CP/M is well known and so is Gary. He's a better programmer than Bill Gates, but isn't as salesman nor as cutthroat as Gates. If Gary even got the IBM deal with the XT, he no doubt wouldn't have licensed it and it would have been killed off by OS/2.
All of man's combined knowledge accessible from a device that fits in the palm of your hand. Imagine showing Da Vinci that device..... Fast forward to modern humans and what do we use it for? Gormless social media, cat videos, porn? Sad clown world. *
I would sell my phone to Steve Jobs for a percent of apple. tell him to slowly reverse engineer it over time, and then take my share certificate back to the present and retire at 22.
@@HardCase1911 He was not that off, the "needle" he mentions is now the smartphone, as far I know, there are more active smartphones than laptops/portable computers.
9:20 "In this little floppy [disk], you have 720kb of storage, so inside the unit you have the ability to have 1.5mb of storage, which is really enough for most applications."
+Wattstone I love watching these for that reason. They talk about 128kb. wow. If they saw my 64GB thumb drive they'd have heart attacks, especially when they heard the price.
"especially when they heard the price." Oh yeah, while the technology has become more capable, it's come *WAY* down in price. Case in point, The Raspberry Pi Zero, given away on the cover of a magazine... in 1985, you got demos of games on a tape on the cover of a magazine, the Raspberry Pi Zero is a full blown *computer* given away on the cover of a magazine with capabilities that 1985 could only dream of (it knocked even the Amiga into a cocked hat)
I ran a small BBS in the mid 80's with maybe a few calls a day and by 1990 had 8 phone lines coming into the house with ST4096's shaking the computers day and night. It was a glorious time discovering hardware and software and making it all work.
It's easy to be smug when judging this stuff by current technological standards. Remembering of course that in 25 years people will look back on the technology we currently use and laugh just as hard.
One of those guys was Gary Kildall... founder of Digital Research and creator of CPM... Laughing at that guy is llaughing at oen of the people that created your world.
Stewart: "With a portable computer, I can check my appointments, work on my script, ship it via modem, even agonize over the show's budget." Stewart was the best, to the day the show ended I know he would always remember the little budget they had.
I feel quite amazed. I remember a time when the computer was a keyboard connected to a TV, a Walkman connected to the keyboard, cassettes with whatever program you wanted to run (in my case, video games) and graphic that had not that much to do with what you are seeing these days, when the concept of an e-mail was Steven Spielberg movies domain, or Star Trek. A time when that brick game, was an actual console, that was running only that game, on lcd screens that later I was going to stare at, at night when I couldn’t sleep, on cell phone, which with the passing of time turned from ginormous bricks to these plastic and metal bits, that I am holding in my hand, typing this comment while waiting the update of GT Sport to finish, so I can race online on a huge Hd Display... in some 20 years.
@28:04 California DMV announced they are finally almost done catching up from the 1985 backlog and apologize for the 35 year process. One employee, Fred, mentions, "Yea, I was hired in 1985 to work on this project. Been doing it my whole career and now I'm retiring, glad I almost got it done."
I never heard of the show growing up in the 19080's in the UK. I would have enjoyed it immensely. The coverage of computers on British TV seemed to be limited to BBC Micros and the occasional Commodore, Spectrum or Atari. I heard about many big these developments via the printed press and was up to the minute (well month) from Byte and PCW magazines amongst others.
George Morrow was quite correct when he said he felt the price for the high end enthusiast laptop should settle down to about 2k, while good quality workhorse laptops would be around 1k. That still holds pretty true.
I remember in 1985 saying how great it would be to have all my comics on a portable computer, and people said I was crazy, that much storage would be impossible.
In the early 90s, I had a 3.5” disk that I labeled “Back to the Future 1, 2, and 3” for when computers got good enough to store movies on a disk. I was kind of right, I guess. ;-) Except now it’s a whole catalog of films in full HD on a micro SD card. Haha. Little me would have been floored.
It didn't take long after that. I remember using a colour LCD in the early '90s on a friend's laptop.... Sega's Game Gear had colour LCD, as did Atari's handheld, so it had to have been around by at least the late '80s.
@@isuzuhombre-lx7jr They are still only a small marginal improvement over high quality LCD screens. Screen quality is unlikely to improve that much in the next 35 years (as compared to the improvements since 35 years ago). There really isn't much more to do with video other than changing it completely to a new novel type, like holographic screens or something. Screens already exceed 300ppi. The best screens look as good as print. Getting bigger isn't much of an issue, especially for handhelds. That limitation is being imposed by pockets, not technology. I don't see TVs getting that much bigger. 60" is already pushing the limits of the comfort of viewing a screen.
"What if" analysis. Amazing. Our modern programming language's don't even have "What if" instructions anymore. Just regular old "if". The ancients really knew what they were doing.
And we’re still asking the same questions. Is this useful, or a solution in search of a problem? But, for only a few hundred bucks, you can save the time of taking your phone out of your pocket to see who’s texting you. And it reminds you to breathe!
This look back into the "early days" of computing is very interesting, especially the myopic view of what the average user needs. I felt sorry for George Morrow. He was talking up his portable computers, but his company went belly up later the same year.
In 2015 dollars, those machines in the 10-12 minute segment would be between $6300 and $10,500. For 128k, a 300 baud modem, and a "double capacity" 3.5" floppy drive. Sweet.
The guy from Morrow Designs really wasn't liking that HP machine, even though in my opinion, it was the clear winner. Unix, has data stored on memory chips (not an SSD, but pretty damn fast battery backed RAM), and lit up screen. I loved these shows for the competition between companies and hearing their sales pitches.
Morrow defending the 5 1/4" floppy with an absolute passion is hilarious. Had the foresight to say that flat panel screens with color were going to be the future, but still defended the floppy.
Watching show starting with 1983 going from 84 to 85 its like night and day in what tech can do. Some 85 shows were on the 84 list I saw a real difference in capability.
In 85 I worked at Computerland and they let me take home a Data General 1. Not even backlit. I went to Steak n shake and had people coming over to see it.
OMG! The size of that laptop at the beginning was huge! I laughed when the cab driver asked where to. The guy pulls out this monster of a laptop just to check..lol
I just bought a 16TB thumb drive for $20... Hard to believe that it's 700 million times the storage of those 3.25" floppy disks... at a tiny fraction (and size) of the price of a floppy drive. Makes you wonder what the future holds.
16:40 "The whole development of LCD displays in Japan as far as I am concerned is aimed towards Plat panel televisions." This man was quite well informed of the state of the art in tech development. That means Japanese tech companies started aiming for FP tvs in the late 1970's. Which are now commonplace, 40+ years later, even transitioning to fourth generation Flat panel displays(Microled, Oled). First three being Plasma, TFT-LCD, IPS-LCD. There is of course the failed SED (Surface conduction Electron-emitter Display) from the Canon/Toshiba cooperation (started in 1986). Unfortunately it suffered from lawsuits making further development practivally impossible. It was definitively axed in 2010. But it would have been far superior to plasma, LCD, or any other plat panel technology at the time. Advanced prototypes demonstrated a true contrast ratio of at the very least 100.000 : 1 . A long exposure photo of a full black LCD, plasma, and SED revealed that SED had way way higher contrast than Plasma. LCD was washed out white. Plasma light grey, SED: Pitch black. You could hardly see there was a tv hanging there. They were all set for production when the litigations began. Production had to be delayed, delayed again, and ultimately they gave up.
19:00 George Morrow was trying to pitch an 5" disk drive, that most portable manufacturers already did not include in their portables, it was being phased out just as 8" disks earlier. This strategy didn't work, as Morrow Designs filed for bankrupcy the same year, and George Morrow retired after that and, according to Wikipedia, spent time digitizing and restoring jazz records. Trials and mostly errors were what led to such progress in the industry.
The 5.25" disk drives were a smart move and actually worked making the model a good seller. What went wrong is that Morrow practically gave the design away to Zenith, who then won a very large government contract to sell their version of it. For the record, in 1985 the 5.25" disk drives weren't on their way out yet. The IBM PS/2, introduced in 1987, moved to the 3.5" format. That would've given Morrow's design plenty of life.
I love all the optimism and possibilities you get from these old shows. The futute looked so bright. I wonder what some of these people on this program (if still alive) would make of current time we live in, with the emerging addiction and depression caused by the mass adoption of super powerful portable computers, ala, mobile phones?
While Japanese and Indians from east were forecasting technology under radar of western money. Long story short, very few of us forego the political and ideological ego while focussing on true human passion of karma.. and rest of us slobs while enjoying the fruits from trees laid by seeds of such few ones karma..talks and talks about religion and trump and shit and do nothing....to be honest..if one as human can think he is being slob to society..he/she should change right now or kill themselves in the hope of best for next reincarnation
On second thought, those guys who showed today's kids like laptop..if only had adopted DOS OS at the time..I wonder there brand name would have been known today too...
So much to comment on in this but one thing that really got me was when one of the sales guys tried assuring us that the response times on LCD displays were comparable to CRTs.. In 1985.. 20ish years before LCD displays truly started to catch up to CRT response times.
7:33 I choked on my coffee while watching this on my dual 24" 1920x1080 24bit color LCD displays, and glancing over at my teenage son's 55" color LCD TV. This was less than 30 years ago. Oh my....
@@kiningroseburg9288 Maybe not as drastic... We are approaching the limit of how small we can build transistors. The PHYSICAL limit, theorized at around 5nm. Unless we find a way to get around that, computers won't get faster
"Screen this large" "640 by 256 pixels" How do you think they would feel if someone told them that a neckbeard was watching this video 30 years later on a 28" 3840 x 2160 monitor?
@@GB-rf4fu Well perhaps it may be a item only for the rich. Meanwhile, we are getting close, at least with the pixels...... (7.68K by 4.32K) th-cam.com/video/OKAU1Xx59ho/w-d-xo.html
@@SteveLeicht1 Watching movies like Back to the Future is a huge disappointment, because we don't have self-fitting and self-drying clothes, and NO HOVERBOARDS!
Back them, not one person shown in this video could ever foresee the availability of smartphones (which are now essentially miniaturised computers) that are far more powerful than the fastest computer depicted here.
I don’t think Paul Schindler was wrong, just very ahead. It’s rare to carry a laptop around but very common to carry a computer the same size as a pocket sewing kit.
I honestly miss the 'old days' of computing. Back in the 80s & 90s they were making breakthrough after breakthrough and there was healthy competition between manufacturers. Things just feel different now, like oh look the new version of my laptop has marginal improvements over last year's model and so-and-so is suing their competitor again.
I agree, but this is the nature of engineering. You can say the same about airliners, cars, etc. Software is the same. It's sad, but there. Just be glad you were around then!
Your laptop today costs a weekly wage, not five monthly salaries, and has enough power to work perfectly fine for the next few years, unlike those 80s machines which often were obsolete as soon as you left the store.
@@lawrencemanningwoh there nerd. Your a computer guy. I'm a pilot. Don't throw in "airliners" arbitrarily. By airliners you mean planes with jet engines, and they've been essentially the same improving slightly in efficiency since the 60s. They've barely changed. Not to mention we still fly turbo props also which have been the same since their inception pretty much as well.
@@OhFishyFishback in the 80s, people got computers mostly for having a word processor and they had printers. The cpu was slow, ram and storage were small, but you only used word basically (for most people) to print stuff. Fast forward today, most people don't use word processors (unless they're in school or writing for a business), and most people especially don't have printers either. No one buys a printer anymore to print out something every once in a while when everything is electronic. Heck the fact we get so much paper Mail still should be considered unusual.
@@davidt8087 IBM clones sure, but C64, Atari 600/800, Amstrads, Spectrums, those were popular home computers used mostly for gaming and fun, and those were gateways for life-long careers in IT for many people. I learned Basic programming from a German manual that came with my C64. I couldn't speak a word in German, so I would just copy the code, run it, and see what happens. Those home computers lasted for years, but business machines were outdated within months and some costed more than a car. There's nothing to miss about those days, other than nostalgia for the long gone youth.
Ironically Paul's prediction was exactly backwards, while being somewhat correct. Briefcase style portable died the way of the dinosaur, we certainly didn't see more past 1985 but portability was improved because of that.
@5:50 Looks like this was the basis for the story arc of the drama TV show "Halt and Catch Fire" about getting that Japanese company to provide them with LCD screens for the portable PC they were designing. @6:26 and components mounted on both sides of the circuit board.
23:45 Lol, "there's still going to be a raging argument about what's portable when we're all 6 feet under ground", I just looked this guy up, and he's still alive (not even all that old), and I'm pretty sure I've never heard that argument raging.
"1.5MBs really enough for all the applications" - Me looking at memory full notification on my 2tb drive on my ROG Ally handheld . how far have we come?
Its been great to see Gary Kildall again who has never gotten as much recognition as he deserves.
Sadly, he had plenty of opportunities but blew them all up.
CP/M is well known and so is Gary. He's a better programmer than Bill Gates, but isn't as salesman nor as cutthroat as Gates. If Gary even got the IBM deal with the XT, he no doubt wouldn't have licensed it and it would have been killed off by OS/2.
@@dijoxx He didn't blow em up, he was taken away from the world too early and suspectely by assault.
This is better than porn
Stewart Cheifet >>>>>>>>>> Sasha Grey
Gustavo Maricate surely Sasha Fierce?
Gary Kildall porn, I could watch some hours of that
😂 why is this true 😂
"You guys have any intention to add color to these screens?"
Texas Instruments: "fuck no"
Ever wish you could travel back in time, whip out your phone, and be like "Lookitthisshit right here..."
All of man's combined knowledge accessible from a device that fits in the palm of your hand. Imagine showing Da Vinci that device.....
Fast forward to modern humans and what do we use it for? Gormless social media, cat videos, porn?
Sad clown world.
*
now imagine a future guy coming to our time and doing the same thing with a tech we've never seen yet. Mind blowing
@@whiptech i mean i guarantee the king of that time will use it to do the same. seeing how medieval works.
U wouldn’t have the service
I would sell my phone to Steve Jobs for a percent of apple. tell him to slowly reverse engineer it over time, and then take my share certificate back to the present and retire at 22.
I love how Paul Schindler always bets the wrong way on the future of computing!
Ya he does. Meanwhile Morrow is dead on.
@@HardCase1911 He was not that off, the "needle" he mentions is now the smartphone, as far I know, there are more active smartphones than laptops/portable computers.
that's funny i was just going to ask if Paul Schindler was ever right on anything.
@@SnipE_mS a blind squirrel.....heeh
He was completely wrong
LoL, I'm old enough now to remember when these shows first aired. I used to wait anxiously every week to get my new tech fix, smh.
Snap! I recall seeing systems like this on programmes like Tomorrow's World.
9:20 "In this little floppy [disk], you have 720kb of storage, so inside the unit you have the ability to have 1.5mb of storage, which is really enough for most applications."
...and all for just $4000
9:26 720 kB
How many disks will I need to store 85GB's worth of GTA V data?
EDIT: I've just worked it out and it requires 113333 720KB disks
@Historical Icons yes in 50 years this will all be like a bag phone.
@@HuntersMoon78, and 1 TB SD card can do about 12 times the data you have.
I started my career in the 80's these guests look and sound exactly what you would expect from a computer salesman of the time.
“... all of it was lost because Gavilan was a victim of bad timing.”
Gary: “Stories like that make me glad I’m in the software business.”
* winces *
Yeah if only he could have seen the future
7:35 "You cannot get LCD's in color" mfw I'm currently watching this on a color LCD monitor. I fucking love the Future.
Lol 😂
+Wattstone I love watching these for that reason. They talk about 128kb. wow. If they saw my 64GB thumb drive they'd have heart attacks, especially when they heard the price.
I had a pocket colour lcd tv in 1989. too expensive for anything bigger
"especially when they heard the price."
Oh yeah, while the technology has become more capable, it's come *WAY* down in price.
Case in point, The Raspberry Pi Zero, given away on the cover of a magazine... in 1985, you got demos of games on a tape on the cover of a magazine, the Raspberry Pi Zero is a full blown *computer* given away on the cover of a magazine with capabilities that 1985 could only dream of (it knocked even the Amiga into a cocked hat)
You can buy a decent monitor at goodwill for $4.99 XD
I ran a small BBS in the mid 80's with maybe a few calls a day and by 1990 had 8 phone lines coming into the house with ST4096's shaking the computers day and night. It was a glorious time discovering hardware and software and making it all work.
Did it exchanges a software? You guys were a first "pirates" ;)
George Morrow talking about flat panel TVs in 1985 and color LCDs is awesome.
Thank you gentlemen for paving out "the future" we're living in nowadays. We have all the modern technology just because of you all.
It's easy to be smug when judging this stuff by current technological standards. Remembering of course that in 25 years people will look back on the technology we currently use and laugh just as hard.
LOL Heck, it's only been 4 years and we're *already* laughing at you! _HAHAHA_
@@cubematrixstudio7605 Heck,a lot has happened in the last week and laughing at you!
HA HA
All in good fun. Helps appreciate what we have.
oh I come from 30 years from now from another planet and I laugh of your current existence.
One of those guys was Gary Kildall... founder of Digital Research and creator of CPM... Laughing at that guy is llaughing at oen of the people that created your world.
Gary saying I'm glad I'm only in the software business (where missing the boat doesn't accrue)....PRICELESS!
RIP Gary! He was a gorgeous man!
The Forgotten Pioneer.
@@GeoNeilUK never forgotten :-)
Probably the best possible wingman for this kind of TV show at the time
Killed by the murderous Microsoft monopolists
@@EJ160E well according to bill gates he did try to give Garry the heads up, but a while later and he did the dirty by buying the clone os.
Yes, taximan, let me take out my luggage laptop which is the size of a conference room table and check my stock reports.
Stewart: "With a portable computer, I can check my appointments, work on my script, ship it via modem, even agonize over the show's budget."
Stewart was the best, to the day the show ended I know he would always remember the little budget they had.
These days, someone in his position would have been using a 4G-celluar tablet to beam in script edits and fiscal matters.
Love how the laptops grind and buzz their drives while the three guys are discussing them.
Watching this on a 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 and smiling as I remember those days.
And in 20 years people will go 🥱🥱 to your iPad Pro
I feel quite amazed. I remember a time when the computer was a keyboard connected to a TV, a Walkman connected to the keyboard, cassettes with whatever program you wanted to run (in my case, video games) and graphic that had not that much to do with what you are seeing these days, when the concept of an e-mail was Steven Spielberg movies domain, or Star Trek. A time when that brick game, was an actual console, that was running only that game, on lcd screens that later I was going to stare at, at night when I couldn’t sleep, on cell phone, which with the passing of time turned from ginormous bricks to these plastic and metal bits, that I am holding in my hand, typing this comment while waiting the update of GT Sport to finish, so I can race online on a huge Hd Display... in some 20 years.
@28:04 California DMV announced they are finally almost done catching up from the 1985 backlog and apologize for the 35 year process. One employee, Fred, mentions, "Yea, I was hired in 1985 to work on this project. Been doing it my whole career and now I'm retiring, glad I almost got it done."
Never missed this cutting edge tech show back in the day!
what channel was it on??
love this episode. Huge milestones.
The future of portable computers is not clear...
Oh, if only they'd known.
If only they could tell the future, they’d know the future?
Literally no one calls it portable. It's just "my phoneI or toplap"
I never heard of the show growing up in the 19080's in the UK. I would have enjoyed it immensely. The coverage of computers on British TV seemed to be limited to BBC Micros and the occasional Commodore, Spectrum or Atari. I heard about many big these developments via the printed press and was up to the minute (well month) from Byte and PCW magazines amongst others.
So did the SkyNet take over in the future?
It's great to hear we still like the vintage shows in the 191st century
@@meanmole3212with AI, it sure looks like it!
It was on PBS in the United States
These sales guys don't stand a chance with Gary, I love it
George Morrow was quite correct when he said he felt the price for the high end enthusiast laptop should settle down to about 2k, while good quality workhorse laptops would be around 1k. That still holds pretty true.
I imagine that what's on the inside, though changed well over time, per a loose paraphrase of Gordon Moore's law of transistor density.
you didnt factor in inflation. add 159% and you see things got way cheaper..
"It's a full screen, 25 lines by 80 columns..."
I remember in 1985 saying how great it would be to have all my comics on a portable computer, and people said I was crazy, that much storage would be impossible.
In the early 90s, I had a 3.5” disk that I labeled “Back to the Future 1, 2, and 3” for when computers got good enough to store movies on a disk. I was kind of right, I guess. ;-) Except now it’s a whole catalog of films in full HD on a micro SD card. Haha. Little me would have been floored.
A two color monitor??? Impossible! My mind is blown! I love old tech.
Black and white. Two colors!
They almost had me sold on those laptops until I heard the price.
Fun to watch the two guests debate the utility of their floppy drives and processors.
5.2 inch floppy disk is still the absolute standard in 2023. Everything runs on them.
I love watching these historical technology videos. This lets me know I made it to the future.....Sort of.
When are these "portables" coming out? I want one!
Still waiting?
I loved this show! Wow i'm getting old
"you cannot make LCDs in color"
*in the meanwhile 25 years later*
And even then, AMOLED and it's derivatives are slowly pushing out LCD
It didn't take long after that. I remember using a colour LCD in the early '90s on a friend's laptop.... Sega's Game Gear had colour LCD, as did Atari's handheld, so it had to have been around by at least the late '80s.
@@isuzuhombre-lx7jr They are still only a small marginal improvement over high quality LCD screens. Screen quality is unlikely to improve that much in the next 35 years (as compared to the improvements since 35 years ago).
There really isn't much more to do with video other than changing it completely to a new novel type, like holographic screens or something. Screens already exceed 300ppi. The best screens look as good as print. Getting bigger isn't much of an issue, especially for handhelds. That limitation is being imposed by pockets, not technology. I don't see TVs getting that much bigger. 60" is already pushing the limits of the comfort of viewing a screen.
Meanwhile cannot be 25 years later
"What if" analysis. Amazing. Our modern programming language's don't even have "What if" instructions anymore. Just regular old "if". The ancients really knew what they were doing.
1:28 and then the smartwatch was born.
And we’re still asking the same questions. Is this useful, or a solution in search of a problem? But, for only a few hundred bucks, you can save the time of taking your phone out of your pocket to see who’s texting you. And it reminds you to breathe!
This look back into the "early days" of computing is very interesting, especially the myopic view of what the average user needs. I felt sorry for George Morrow. He was talking up his portable computers, but his company went belly up later the same year.
State of the art when I was in 8th grade at Traweek Junior High School (SoCal), good memories!
Just now realized that i watched the segment on LCD's on a 23 inch 1920x1080 IPS LCD.
Watching it 7 years later on a Galaxy S20 tra that has a diagonal of 6.7 inches and a resolution of 3200x1440 xD
In 2015 dollars, those machines in the 10-12 minute segment would be between $6300 and $10,500. For 128k, a 300 baud modem, and a "double capacity" 3.5" floppy drive. Sweet.
That's why their target market were business men who could afford such things. These computers were not being bought by your average person.
The guy from Morrow Designs really wasn't liking that HP machine, even though in my opinion, it was the clear winner. Unix, has data stored on memory chips (not an SSD, but pretty damn fast battery backed RAM), and lit up screen.
I loved these shows for the competition between companies and hearing their sales pitches.
It's probably because he knew Morrow was about to go bankrupt.
He was rude interrupting the hp guy.
@@samirayis5830 agreed
When the 5.25" floppy drive is your big selling point, you are off to a bad start.
more shows should have dueling sales pitches
Morrow defending the 5 1/4" floppy with an absolute passion is hilarious. Had the foresight to say that flat panel screens with color were going to be the future, but still defended the floppy.
Don't copy that floppy!
@@Nightweaver1 The Software Publishers Association would be a *little* disappointed with me.
Watching show starting with 1983 going from 84 to 85 its like night and day in what tech can do. Some 85 shows were on the 84 list I saw a real difference in capability.
In 85 I worked at Computerland and they let me take home a Data General 1. Not even backlit. I went to Steak n shake and had people coming over to see it.
I had people come over to show them an Oculus Rift
OMG! The size of that laptop at the beginning was huge! I laughed when the cab driver asked where to. The guy pulls out this monster of a laptop just to check..lol
"And it only weighs 10 pounds!"
It's amazing how less clunky laptops have gotten, color, speed, smaller and see some old faces from computing history.
These guys were way ahead of the game. I was still stuck playing games in my atari.
they didn't mention if it will run crysis.
You didn't mension if your asshole will run Crysis
Love this old tech stuff, just love it!!!
I just bought a 16TB thumb drive for $20... Hard to believe that it's 700 million times the storage of those 3.25" floppy disks... at a tiny fraction (and size) of the price of a floppy drive. Makes you wonder what the future holds.
there's no way that 16TB drive actually holds 16TB -- you got scammed, buddy
16:40 "The whole development of LCD displays in Japan as far as I am concerned is aimed towards Plat panel televisions." This man was quite well informed of the state of the art in tech development.
That means Japanese tech companies started aiming for FP tvs in the late 1970's. Which are now commonplace, 40+ years later, even transitioning to fourth generation Flat panel displays(Microled, Oled). First three being Plasma, TFT-LCD, IPS-LCD. There is of course the failed SED (Surface conduction Electron-emitter Display) from the Canon/Toshiba cooperation (started in 1986). Unfortunately it suffered from lawsuits making further development practivally impossible. It was definitively axed in 2010. But it would have been far superior to plasma, LCD, or any other plat panel technology at the time. Advanced prototypes demonstrated a true contrast ratio of at the very least 100.000 : 1 . A long exposure photo of a full black LCD, plasma, and SED revealed that SED had way way higher contrast than Plasma. LCD was washed out white. Plasma light grey, SED: Pitch black. You could hardly see there was a tv hanging there. They were all set for production when the litigations began. Production had to be delayed, delayed again, and ultimately they gave up.
so sad
i find that george morrow tended to be really hit and miss with his predictions, but his predictions on LCD screens was really quite spot on.
So nice to watch something where very little "umms", "uhhss" and no sentences ending in "... so."
That 128k memory looks sweet, hope it's upgradable to 256k?
19:00 George Morrow was trying to pitch an 5" disk drive, that most portable manufacturers already did not include in their portables, it was being phased out just as 8" disks earlier. This strategy didn't work, as Morrow Designs filed for bankrupcy the same year, and George Morrow retired after that and, according to Wikipedia, spent time digitizing and restoring jazz records. Trials and mostly errors were what led to such progress in the industry.
The 5.25" disk drives were a smart move and actually worked making the model a good seller. What went wrong is that Morrow practically gave the design away to Zenith, who then won a very large government contract to sell their version of it.
For the record, in 1985 the 5.25" disk drives weren't on their way out yet. The IBM PS/2, introduced in 1987, moved to the 3.5" format. That would've given Morrow's design plenty of life.
Right at the start a smart watch before smart watches were even thought of
I love all the optimism and possibilities you get from these old shows. The futute looked so bright. I wonder what some of these people on this program (if still alive) would make of current time we live in, with the emerging addiction and depression caused by the mass adoption of super powerful portable computers, ala, mobile phones?
I was one year old then...had just got a bump on my forehead, mark of which still shine up there.. :)
While Japanese and Indians from east were forecasting technology under radar of western money. Long story short, very few of us forego the political and ideological ego while focussing on true human passion of karma.. and rest of us slobs while enjoying the fruits from trees laid by seeds of such few ones karma..talks and talks about religion and trump and shit and do nothing....to be honest..if one as human can think he is being slob to society..he/she should change right now or kill themselves in the hope of best for next reincarnation
On second thought, those guys who showed today's kids like laptop..if only had adopted DOS OS at the time..I wonder there brand name would have been known today too...
Being Australian I was never aware of these shows. I feel robbed. I would have been glued to the TV every week.
I wanna go back in time and sell my 2008 Sony Vaio to these guys for 30 grand.
Umm, if you had a time machine, you could sell that to the gov't for 20 billion. 😂😂😂
So much to comment on in this but one thing that really got me was when one of the sales guys tried assuring us that the response times on LCD displays were comparable to CRTs.. In 1985.. 20ish years before LCD displays truly started to catch up to CRT response times.
A full 1.5 MB?? No one will ever need that.
16:45 - Japan was already moving away from CRT as early as 85 by this mans account which means even longer than he knew.
The music... is so catchy!
"1.2mb of storage , enough for most apps", damn you ps3 120gb and you still want more =p
haha...u comment became old...so i will make fun of it.... some games nowadays are more than 120gb
120gb? Ahahah
120gb was old 7 years ago
You can't get LCDs in colour -_-
7:33 I choked on my coffee while watching this on my dual 24" 1920x1080 24bit color LCD displays, and glancing over at my teenage son's 55" color LCD TV. This was less than 30 years ago. Oh my....
Dexxter
Imagine what the next 30 years holds in store
Koning Rosekraans You made me think. Really hard.
@@kiningroseburg9288 Maybe not as drastic... We are approaching the limit of how small we can build transistors. The PHYSICAL limit, theorized at around 5nm. Unless we find a way to get around that, computers won't get faster
Yet a couple minutes later Gary talks about "the Japanese" already making color LCD displays for TV's.
"Screen this large"
"640 by 256 pixels"
How do you think they would feel if someone told them that a neckbeard was watching this video 30 years later on a 28" 3840 x 2160 monitor?
Estel Blackheart and in the year 2019: a 400'' 10k X 6k monitor.
Well considering 30 years ago, we all thought we'd be driving flying cars by now, I bet they'd be pretty disappointed.
@@heedmywarning2792 welcome to almost 2020, no such monitor
@@GB-rf4fu Well perhaps it may be a item only for the rich. Meanwhile, we are getting close, at least with the pixels...... (7.68K by 4.32K) th-cam.com/video/OKAU1Xx59ho/w-d-xo.html
@@GB-rf4fu Holy sh1t, I found it. 15.3K by 8.6K. 400Ft by 33Ft. Science City Kolkata. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_video_screens
It's crazy to hear these guys speaking in terms of kilobytes. Wow, how far things have come.
Now if you scale up far enough, enterprise computing talks about petabytes, even exabytes (if you're Google).
Oh wow in the 80's people didn't think flat panel tvs would be a thing. Man I miss the old days...
Watching movies like Aliens is funny because they have all this tech but not flat screens.
@@SteveLeicht1 Watching movies like Back to the Future is a huge disappointment, because we don't have self-fitting and self-drying clothes, and NO HOVERBOARDS!
@@wohlhabendermanager True, but you CAN get a DeLorean "brand new" made from extra parts from 1983. :)
@@SteveLeicht1 But where do I get a flux capacitor? :O
@@wohlhabendermanager Walmart.
Back them, not one person shown in this video could ever foresee the availability of smartphones (which are now essentially miniaturised computers) that are far more powerful than the fastest computer depicted here.
How’s your 7 year old computer doing dude ?
Data General One? I used one of those things for 2 years back in the late '80's. I thought (hoped) I'd never see one again!
The 'new' 3.5 floppy.. lol I cant! seriously tho we need tech shows like this on TV again!
That reminds me of the rise and fall of TechTV.
omg i love watching these here in the future
I don’t think Paul Schindler was wrong, just very ahead. It’s rare to carry a laptop around but very common to carry a computer the same size as a pocket sewing kit.
I love the intro of this program. : D
The Morrow guy was right, no one works in airports and airplanes using those luggables.
I honestly miss the 'old days' of computing. Back in the 80s & 90s they were making breakthrough after breakthrough and there was healthy competition between manufacturers. Things just feel different now, like oh look the new version of my laptop has marginal improvements over last year's model and so-and-so is suing their competitor again.
I agree, but this is the nature of engineering. You can say the same about airliners, cars, etc. Software is the same. It's sad, but there. Just be glad you were around then!
Your laptop today costs a weekly wage, not five monthly salaries, and has enough power to work perfectly fine for the next few years, unlike those 80s machines which often were obsolete as soon as you left the store.
@@lawrencemanningwoh there nerd. Your a computer guy. I'm a pilot. Don't throw in "airliners" arbitrarily. By airliners you mean planes with jet engines, and they've been essentially the same improving slightly in efficiency since the 60s. They've barely changed. Not to mention we still fly turbo props also which have been the same since their inception pretty much as well.
@@OhFishyFishback in the 80s, people got computers mostly for having a word processor and they had printers. The cpu was slow, ram and storage were small, but you only used word basically (for most people) to print stuff. Fast forward today, most people don't use word processors (unless they're in school or writing for a business), and most people especially don't have printers either. No one buys a printer anymore to print out something every once in a while when everything is electronic. Heck the fact we get so much paper Mail still should be considered unusual.
@@davidt8087 IBM clones sure, but C64, Atari 600/800, Amstrads, Spectrums, those were popular home computers used mostly for gaming and fun, and those were gateways for life-long careers in IT for many people. I learned Basic programming from a German manual that came with my C64. I couldn't speak a word in German, so I would just copy the code, run it, and see what happens. Those home computers lasted for years, but business machines were outdated within months and some costed more than a car. There's nothing to miss about those days, other than nostalgia for the long gone youth.
My desire for that watch computer is filling my every waking moment....
1.44mb floppy. now thats a name ive not heard in a long time...a long time..
Ironically Paul's prediction was exactly backwards, while being somewhat correct. Briefcase style portable died the way of the dinosaur, we certainly didn't see more past 1985 but portability was improved because of that.
That intro and cheesy music gets me everytime
Watching this on my iPhone
Just imagine a special edition episode will be shot with latest iOS and Android versions pitted one on one Computer Chronicle Style haha
128k memory. Beast.
Man I hope we get those LCD tvs soon
Now you can learn to build a rocket while you're on the porceline throne.
Gary was ahead of his time man.
@5:50
Looks like this was the basis for the story arc of the drama TV show "Halt and Catch Fire" about getting that Japanese company to provide them with LCD screens for the portable PC they were designing. @6:26 and components mounted on both sides of the circuit board.
So obviously recorded on Umatic tape. "Ringing" on any vertical lines was a common flaw with the format.
23:45 Lol, "there's still going to be a raging argument about what's portable when we're all 6 feet under ground", I just looked this guy up, and he's still alive (not even all that old), and I'm pretty sure I've never heard that argument raging.
"1.5MBs really enough for all the applications" - Me looking at memory full notification on my 2tb drive on my ROG Ally handheld . how far have we come?
1985 George Morrow: the whole development of LCD tech is to lead to flat panel televisions
boy THAT prediction did not age well!
WOW....128k memory! Look out!
TAXI MAN: where are you going? ME:: Hold on let me check my PORTABLE COMPUTER!!!!~! *three hours later* Me: Somewhere in pheonix
In the future we will be watching this program on Mac's so thin that can fit in an envelope.
It'd be nice if the bearded man would let his guests answer the questions he'd ask them.