How Digital Pioneers Put the 'Personal' in PC's

How Digital Pioneers Put the 'Personal' in PC's "The modern personal computer came to life three decades ago this month when a group of Xerox engineers projected an image of Cookie Monster from "Sesame Street" onto the screen of an unfinished machine known as the Alto.
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"Most people still thought the purpose of a computer was to grind up numbers," said Mr. Thacker, who spent many years at the Digital Equipment Corporation and now works at Microsoft, where he recently worked on the company's Tablet PC design with Mr. Lampson. "We thought it was a communications device."