Mary Allen Wilkes Takes a Computer Home

Today, it's so common to have a computer in the home we barely notice them. They've become part of the furniture. While the personal computer revolution was still decades away (see the next two chapters), perhaps the first home computer appeared in 1965.

Mary Allen Wilkes, a programmer on the LINC, the small laboratory computer designed at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, wrote its operating system, LAP6. When the project moved to Washington University in St. Louis, she chose to keep working from her parents' home in Baltimore, where a LINC was installed in the living room.

Wilkes is thus often described as the first person to use a personal computer at home. The LINC itself was extremely influential. Meant for one researcher at a time and operated at a console with a screen and keyboard, the LINC anticipated our desire for computers always nearby.