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What kind of computer can be considered a desktop? Perhaps compact enough to it could be placed on the table. YouTuber Alexander the ok considers this to be the D-17b, which was responsible for guiding Minuteman 1 ballistic missiles and was later transferred to US universities.
In the late 1960s, computers from retired Minuteman 1 rockets were donated to universities and other research institutions free of charge. By that time, the Minuteman 1 rocket was being phased out in favor of the Minuteman 2. The computers inside these rockets were not at all like cabinets that took up an entire room – it could be lifted by one person. It had a cylindrical form factor.
Guidance was the original purpose of these computers. Before the advent of GPS, missiles relied solely on inertial navigation, thanks to gyroscopes and accelerometers, the readings of which were used in the guidance trajectory equations that the D-17b calculated, literally and figuratively, on the fly.
The Minuteman 1 rocket was not that big: 17 m high and 1.7 m at its widest point. The diameter of the missile guidance section in which the D-17b was located was 75 cm in diameter and 80 cm in height. Of course, it's larger than a regular desktop PC, but it can definitely be placed on a table.
The computer weighed 28 kg and was mounted in a dodecagonal chassis 54 cm high and 74 cm wide. All logic, timing and I/O were controlled by 75 separate printed circuit boards. These were all discrete components, there were no integrated circuits. In other words, this computer did not have a processor. D-17b contained a small number of transistors and a fairly large number of diodes and resistors. The very concept of a transistor was new then, the desire for reliability dictated the use of the smallest possible number of transistors, about 1500 in total.
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Another important component was the magnetic hard disk. The first commercial hard drive was the 1-ton IBM 350, released five years before the D-17b. Thus, the D-17b memory device was a remarkable achievement of miniaturization. The drive held 8 KB of data.
The D-17b computer was a remarkable achievement in 1962 and was not cheap. At today's exchange rate, it was worth approximately $2 million – giving it away for free was unheard of generosity. One D-17b can be seen at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the other is on display at a museum in Montana.
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Sources: Tom`s Hardware, Wikipedia
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