Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation

Home Computers showcases the quirky and characterful beginnings of a commercial product that would come to unite the globe: the personal computer.

As so much technology is forgotten once it is superseded, this is a celebration of machines, industrial design and techno-utopianism of an era in the not-so-distant past. Conceived as a visual sourcebook of the most popular, most powerful and most idiosyncratic computers to grace our workspaces, this timely publication offers a reflection on how far we’ve come and a nostalgic look at a time when digital worlds could be contained in a box and turned off, rather than ever-present in our lives.

Home Computers opens with a scene-setting retrospective by computer and gaming writer Alex Wiltshire. The book’s heart is a series of specially commissioned photographs that capture details of switches and early user-interface design, letterforms and logos, and the quirks that set one computer off from another. Images are complemented by a potted history of each device, the inventors or personalities behind it, and its innovations and influences.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thames and Hudson Ltd; 1st edition (16 April 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 050002216X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0500022160
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 21 x 2.5 x 24.6 cm