Minicomputers emerged in the 1960s as smaller and less expensive alternatives to mainframe computers. Laboratories, universities, industrial sites and businesses used them for scientific computing, engineering, process control and data management.
Systems such as Digital Equipment Corporation’s PDP series made computing accessible to individual departments and research teams without requiring a large mainframe installation.
Minicomputers played a major role in the 1960s and 1970s, helping to make professional computing more accessible before the rise of microcomputers and personal computers.
PDP-1: the interactive computer that brought Spacewar! to life At the beginning of the 1960s, using a computer still often meant preparing a program, handing it to an operator, and waiting for the printed results. Programmers rarely interacted directly with the machine: they submitted a job and received the output later. The PDP-1, or Programmed…
