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[ti:Predicting the Future]
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[00:01.47]Lesson 51
[00:03.53]Predicting the future
[00:12.38]What was the 'future' electronic development that Leon Bagrit wasn't able to foresee?
[00:20.75]Predicting the future is notoriously difficult.
[00:24.55]Who could have imagined, in the mid 1970s, for example,
[00:28.31]that by the end of the 20th century, computers would be as common in people's homes as TV sets?
[00:35.48]In the 1970s, computers were common enough,
[00:39.39]but only in big business, government departments and large organizations.
[00:45.54]These were the so-called mainframe machines.
[00:49.37]Mainframe computers were very large indeed often occupying whole air-conditioned rooms,
[00:56.40]employing full-time technicians and run on specially-written software.
[01:01.79]Though these large machines still exist,
[01:04.61]many of their functions have been taken over by small powerful personal computers, commonly known as PCs.
[01:13.65]In 1975, a primitive machine called the Altair, was launched in the USA.
[01:20.48]It can properly be described as the first 'home computer' and it pointed the way to the future.
[01:27.81]This was followed, at the end of the 1970s, by a machine called an Apple.
[01:33.86]In the early 1980s, the computer giant,
[01:37.17]IBM produced the world's first Personal Computer.