Atari Games Console
During the 50 year period of the Department, computing came from a specialist field with machines in special rooms like the computer rooms the department had and costing tens of thousands of pounds, to a stage now where computers are in almost every product and in every house. They have become ‘Ubiquitous’.
A critical stage of this evolution was the home computer - the machine designed for home use. To begin with this was so an owner could easily program the machines (when they started up they dropped immediately into programming mode!). Only later do we see the “windows” type screen. The change has been quite incredible. The cost of the machines dropped and their computing power increased massively.
As the technology has developed the Department has had to keep updating its teaching content and research agenda to match the new approaches and applications.
In the exhibition we show a selection of machines to illustrate this change, including the Atari Games Console.