{"id":806,"date":"2011-09-26T12:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T17:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=806"},"modified":"2011-09-26T12:27:04","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T17:27:04","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-asimovs-pocket-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/806\/retro-scan-of-the-week-asimovs-pocket-computer","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Asimov&#8217;s Pocket Computer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/asimov_pocket_computer_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/asimov_pocket_computer_small.jpg\" alt=\"Isaac Asimov promotes the TRS-80 Pocket Computer - Magazine Ad - 1982\" class=\"centered\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>&#8220;It&#8217;s so small I nearly swallowed it.&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/slideshow\/story\/287254\/10-tiny-pcs-of-the-1980s\/4\" target=\"_blank\">TRS-80 Pocket Computer<\/a> was an amazing little gadget.  This 1980 calculator-sized computer packed a full QWERTY keyboard and the BASIC programming language built in.  The ability to program BASIC on such a tiny pocket machine was incredible in an age when few calculators were programmable at all, and the ones that were required arcane rituals to program.<\/p>\n<p>I used this exact model myself in high school on some math tests to perform some trigonometry equations in a BASIC program I wrote.  Even though that was in the mid-late 1990s, the Pocket Computer seemed so futuristic that the teacher had no idea it was possible.  Even today, the Pocket Computer remains incredibly useful for certain tasks.  That&#8217;s an amazing thing to say about a device released in 1980.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Byte, February 1982, back cover ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> What&#8217;s the smallest computing device you owned prior to the year 2000?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s so small I nearly swallowed it.&#8221; The TRS-80 Pocket Computer was an amazing little gadget. This 1980 calculator-sized computer packed a full QWERTY keyboard and the BASIC programming language built in. The ability to program BASIC on such a tiny pocket machine was incredible in an age when few calculators were programmable at all, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,27,26,8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-computer-design","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-technology-commentary","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}