{"id":26754,"date":"2024-01-25T17:05:49","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T17:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ch.imperial.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=26754"},"modified":"2024-01-26T19:55:45","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T19:55:45","slug":"the-macintosh-computer-at-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ch.ic.ac.uk\/rzepa\/blog\/?p=26754","title":{"rendered":"The Macintosh computer at 40."},"content":{"rendered":"
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On 24th January 1984, the Macintosh computer was released, as all the media<\/a> are informing us. Apparently, some are still working. I thought I would give my own personal recollections of that period.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Mac reached UK stores via a dealership only in 1985. What brought it to the attention of our university chemistry department was that also in 1985 the Chemdraw program was released<\/a> and visitors to e.g. ACS meetings that year (probably the spring meeting) brought news of it back. A third piece of the puzzle, the Laserwriter<\/a> also appeared that year. What difference would all this make? Well, take a look at the diagram in this 1983 article[1]<\/a><\/span>. I drew that with stencils and transfer lettering, and the diagrams in this article took me ages! The article was submitted to what was called a “camera ready” journal, as part of the process of accelerating its publication, so it had to be as perfect as I could make it. I had to start from the beginning several times, since sometimes even Typex could not fix the errors or rescue the diagram from being a bit to big to fit onto the Journal provided template.
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\nAfter drafting these diagrams, I vowed never again! Fortunately, the Mac, Chemdraw and the Laserwriter appeared some 18 months later! I remember going around the (mostly organic) chemists in the department, asking if they would like to join in a bulk purchase and we ended up with 10 Macs. By 1985, the model had moved on to the Mac 512K which were the ones actually purchased and photos of the front and rear of one are shown below (I still have it, hoping a collector might make me an offer one day).<\/p>\n\n\t\t