Jon Titus '67 didn't invent the personal computer. It's hard to say who did, since no one agrees on which machine first qualified for that designation. What Titus did do--in an era before anyone envisioned a PC in every home or an electronics superstore in every mall--was to put the plans and parts for a do-it-yourself computer into the hands of hobbyists throughout the world.

Jonathan Titus, M.S. '69, was awarded a 2002 George R. Stibitz Computer & Communications Pioneer Award, joining an elite group of information-age trailblazers. The Stibitz Award, which pays tribute to the living pioneers of the computer and information age, is presented by the American Computer Museum in conjunction with the Computer Science Department of Montana State University. Titus received his award at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Mont., in October.

Jon Titus is vice-president and editorial director for Test & Measurement World magazine (Cahners Publishing Co., Newton, MA). Prior to joining T&MW, Jon was with EDN Magazine for nine years. During his last seven years, he served as chief editor.

Before his stint at EDN, Titus was president of the Blacksburg Group, Inc. (Blacksburg, VA) where he and his colleagues wrote and edited books about computers and electronics. The company's "Bugbook" and "Blacksburg Series" books were popular in the late 70's and through the 80's.

When Popular Electronics ran its first cover story on the Altair in January 1975, 1 was the technical director for the magazine and therefore fortunate enough to witness and aid in the birth of the personal/ home computer. Before those early years become set in stone, I would like to offer this reminiscence and give credit to those pioneers whose names may be unknown to the home computer users now benefiting from the fruits of their labors.

It all started for me in the summer of 1972, during a vacation trip out west. My wife and I were near Albuquerque when I called Forrest Mims, a contributor to the magazine who lived in this town out in the middle of nowhere. His father had a small company called M. I. T. S. (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), which occupied the bathroom of Forrest's mobile home and manufactured small electronic gadgets for radio-control airplanes and model rockets.

Today, the term PC or personal computer is taken to mean the IBM PC or a clone thereof. That was not always so. For some time after the microprocessor had burst onto the scene with the 4004 and 8008, the personal computer was most conspicuous by its absence. I remember telling a colleague in 1977 that I was surprised that no large company had taken one of the new microprocessors and used it to build a personal computer.

Perhaps no major company wanted to create a personal computer market because, at that time, there were no low cost peripherals such as hard disk drives, display technology was very crude (simple text-only displays on domestic TVs), there were no operating systems and rather less applications software. The enthusiast or hacker blazed the trail to the PC market. I built my own microcomputer in 1976 using Motorola's 6800. The basic system was not too difficult to construct because Motorola provided a kit of parts (CPU, memory, serial I/O, and a bootstrap loader in ROM). Of course, there weren't any peripherals. I had to take it to the university where I was a postgraduate and connect it to a Teletype (a mechanical keyboard and printer). To use it at home I had to design and construct a video display using about 50 logic chips.