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Cyhist Mar 06 1997 A
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Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997 15:15:40 -0500
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Gwen Bell <bell@TCM.ORG>
Subject: Re: CM> First uproc Toy?
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Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
>>My understanding is that Merlin is the first commercial toy to use a microprocessor.
The Digitor was built in 1974 with an embedded Intel 4004. It was a "toy" used for education. You set the difficulty and length of arithmetic problems by adjusint side knobs. Students answered problems posed on the display panel by entering a number on the keypad. Correct answers were trewarded by a happy face and incorrect ones by a sad face. At the end of the exercise, Digitor displayed the number of problems answered correctly. More than 100,000 Digitors were sold by Centurion Industries of Redwood City, Ca. And it looked a bit like a robot since it was a sphere with a "face" on four legs.
Gwen Bell, Director of Collections, Computer Museum History Center PO Box 3038, Stanford, CA 94309-3038 phone: 408-562-7915. email: Bell@tcm.org; http://www.tcm.org/history/historic-ovr.html
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Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Gwen Bell <bell@TCM.ORG>
Subject: Re: CM> First uproc Toy?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
>>My understanding is that Merlin is the first commercial toy to use a microprocessor.
The Digitor was built in 1974 with an embedded Intel 4004. It was a "toy" used for education. You set the difficulty and length of arithmetic problems by adjusint side knobs. Students answered problems posed on the display panel by entering a number on the keypad. Correct answers were trewarded by a happy face and incorrect ones by a sad face. At the end of the exercise, Digitor displayed the number of problems answered correctly. More than 100,000 Digitors were sold by Centurion Industries of Redwood City, Ca. And it looked a bit like a robot since it was a sphere with a "face" on four legs.
Gwen Bell, Director of Collections, Computer Museum History Center PO Box 3038, Stanford, CA 94309-3038 phone: 408-562-7915. email: Bell@tcm.org; http://www.tcm.org/history/historic-ovr.html
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