Keyboard Builders' Digest / Keyboard Spotting
MCM/70
The MCM/70 is a Canadian microcomputer from 1973 with one-line gas plasma display and dual cassette drives. Posted by reportcrosspost.
Published October 9, 2021
Micro Computer Machines Inc was a company from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, led by Mers Kutt.
As a vintage computer collector, you can’t get much better than finding the ultimate Canadian vintage computer. It really is a marvel of engineering and technology for the year 1972, when it was designed (source).
On one hand, this model can be considered to be the first PC. On the other hand though, as Zbigniew Stachniak, author of the book Inventing the PC: The MCM/70 Story concludes:
"What is the MCM/70's place in the modern history of computing? … It is rather unlikely that one can come up with a direct argument demonstrating that the MCM/70 has met … any of [the] criteria [for at significant technological invention]" – Zbigniew Stachniak.
More info and photos (keyboard, matrix and caps/stem pics too) in this write-up.
The double-shot caps had Greek letters and mathematical symbols as sublegends with a rather uncommon serif font what makes this computer even more cool.
The MCM/70's single-line, 32 character glass plasma display allowed scrolling and moving up and down as you can see in this video showing the MCM/70 in action:
Published on Sat 9th Oct 2021. Featured in KBD #47 (source).
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