Sphere 1
Personal computer released in 1975
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sphere 1 was a personal computer completed in 1975 by Michael Donald Wise and Monroe Tyler of Sphere Corporation, of Bountiful, Utah.[8] The Sphere 1 featured a Motorola 6800 CPU, onboard ROM, a full-sized CRT monitor, 4 KB of RAM, and a keyboard with a numeric keypad.
Sphere 1 computer system | |
| Developer | Michael Donald Wise[1][2][3] |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Sphere Corporation[4][5] |
| Released | 1975 |
| Introductory price | US$860 (Kit:Sphere 1) |
| Discontinued | 1977[6][7] |
| Units sold | 1,300[citation needed] |
| Operating system | "PDS" 1 KB Basic |
| CPU | Motorola 6800 |
| Memory | 4 KB of RAM (Expandable to 64 KB), 1 KB PROM |
| Display | 16 lines x 32 characters, CRT monitor |
| Input | keyboard with a numeric keypad |
The Sphere 1 was among the earliest complete all-in-one microcomputers that could be plugged in, turned on, and was fully functional.[9] Michael touted it as the first "true PC" because it had a keyboard, a number pad, a monitor, external storage, and did not run on a punch tape. In this respect, it is pre-dated by the 1973 MCM/70, among others, but the Sphere included a full-sized display that these generally lacked. When BYTE Magazine did its annual history of the computer, it always included Sphere 1, showing that prior microcomputers lacked the user I/O interface built into the Sphere 1.
The Sphere 1 also included a keyboard-operated reset feature consisting of two keys wired in series that sent a reset signal to the CPU triggering a hard reboot. Wise considered this to be the first keyboard activated reset – a predecessor to the now-common Control-Alt-Delete combination.[10][11]
It is not clear how many systems were sold; production models were sent to computer stores, but the company disappeared shortly thereafter.
