Prediction of a "Home Computer" and backup to be used in 2004!

Rand Corporation's 50 Year prediction of the home computer and backup for the year 2004!

Home computer 50 year prediction for 2004 by the Rand Corporation!

Home computer and data storage prediction!

This is a picture of a "home computer" from a 1954 issue of the Popular Mechanics of what the Rand Corporation envision as how such device could look like in 2004!

So it claims!
Actually it’s a fake! It’s a collage of different images!

The instrument panel is from of the interior of a submarine. The teletype equipment is of a later date and was not available in 1954. The Fortran language, although invented by IBM 1954 was not commercially available until two years later.

Luckily the steering-wheel in the modern “home computer” has been replaced by the mouse!

This is a picture which has been circulating around on the Internet for a while.

Anyway, it’s a funny picture.
Although fake, it shows the rapid development with which the computer industry is advancing. It let you reflect on the future, what it can hold for the home computer and what new type of data storage will come in the future.

This picture could have been a prediction from the mid 1950’s on how a computer could look 50 years into the future.

Nobody could predict the rapid advance of miniaturization with integrated circuits, optical cables, the Internet and the Word Wide Web. Nor could anyone predict 50 years ago that computers would be used not only for advanced calculations, but also be used in ordinary day to day tasks like word-processing, bookkeeping and information searching on the Internet.

Even those in the industry got it wrong!

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
1943 Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
1977 Ken Olson, President of DEC Digital Equipment Corporation.