{"id":8038,"date":"2022-04-07T01:55:47","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T01:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8038"},"modified":"2022-04-07T01:55:47","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T01:55:47","slug":"john-roach-pioneer-of-the-personal-computer-is-dead-at-83-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8038","title":{"rendered":"John Roach, Pioneer of the Personal Computer, Is Dead at 83 &#8211; The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/03\/23\/technology\/personaltech\/john-roach-dead.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/merlin_204261033_a92a75cb-735c-4683-95b1-f963ca92d4fc-facebookJumbo.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>He helped make the home computer ubiquitous by introducing the fully assembled Tandy TRS-80, which was so novel at the time that it became a museum piece.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The New York Times reports that <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/03\/23\/technology\/personaltech\/john-roach-dead.html\">John Roach, Pioneer of the Personal Computer, Is Dead at 83<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Roach was the executive who introduced the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/TRS-80\">Tandy TRS-80<\/a> in the 1970s, one of the first fully assembled microcomputers. I didn&#8217;t realize how dominant the TRS-80 was in the late 1970s. At one point it held 40% of the market. We usually hear about Apple and IBM, but not about the TRS (Tandy Radio Schack).<\/p>\n<p>They later released a laptop or tablet computer that I lusted after, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digibarn.com\/collections\/systems\/trs80-model100\/\">TRS80 Model 100<\/a>. This was a keyboard and a small LCD screen and enough software to type notes or edit text. There was also a modem to send your writing somewhere. I still think this form factor makes sense. You can&#8217;t really type on an iPad (unless you get a keyboard for it) and you don&#8217;t really need lots of screen for typing notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He helped make the home computer ubiquitous by introducing the fully assembled Tandy TRS-80, which was so novel at the time that it became a museum piece. The New York Times reports that John Roach, Pioneer of the Personal Computer, Is Dead at 83.\u00a0Roach was the executive who introduced the Tandy TRS-80 in the 1970s, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8038\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">John Roach, Pioneer of the Personal Computer, Is Dead at 83 &#8211; The New York Times<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","category-history-of-computing-and-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8040,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8038\/revisions\/8040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}