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World's 1st PC rediscovered by accident in UK house clearance nearly 50 years after last sighting


Still Waters

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Two Q1 microcomputers, widely considered to be the first single-microchip PCs, have been found by house clearers in the U.K. The discovery brings the total number of known surviving units to three in the world.

Employees from the house-clearing company Just Clear found the two Q1s buried under several boxes while clearing out a property, Just Clear's founder Brendan O'Shea told Live Science in an email. These two models were last used by an oil drilling company in the 1970s, and the other known model's location is thought to be somewhere in Scandinavia, O'Shea added.

Just Clear employees initially had no idea what they had found. O'Shea then consulted with an expert, who told him these devices were the world's first fully integrated desktop computers powered by a single-chip microprocessor.

https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/worlds-1st-pc-q1-rediscovered-by-accident-in-uk-house-clearance-nearly-50-years-after-last-sighting

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I still have a ZX spectrum sitting in a shoe box in the bottom of a wardrobe with a tape player and tapes.

Getting programs to load needed the patience of a saint. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/20/2024 at 6:24 PM, L.A.T.1961 said:

I still have a ZX spectrum sitting in a shoe box in the bottom of a wardrobe with a tape player and tapes.

Getting programs to load needed the patience of a saint. 

You do know how much originals sell for don`t you?

You have a small fortune there. I sadly gave my C64 and Amiga 500+ away around the year 2000. 

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7 hours ago, Electric Scooter said:

You do know how much originals sell for don`t you?

You have a small fortune there. I sadly gave my C64 and Amiga 500+ away around the year 2000. 

No, I haven't looked at its value. There is a trend for older electrical equipment to be worth more. So I would not be surprised if it's gone up in value. 😵

I do have a few other items of vintage equipment. An old, mid 70's, Akai AA1175 stereo receiver, Sega Mega Drive and I recently sold a 1980's Roland Juno 6 synth with original box for a nice price as I didn't use it. I also have a small collection of old camera's.

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  • 2 months later...

Later this week, on May 24 and 25, the two computers (plus the Q1 Lite’s companion printer) will go up for sale at Heritage Auctions, where they could fetch more than $60,000 each, the Observer’s Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly reports.

“Keep in mind these have never been to auction, and there is no record or precedent set for them,” Sara Balbi, the managing director of Heritage Auctions’ London office, tells the Observer. “We’ll have to see what the market decides.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cleaning-crew-discovers-one-worlds-oldest-surviving-desktop-computers-180984399/

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