Interact Home Computer
The Interact Home Computer is a rare, very early (1978) American home computer made by Interact Electronics Inc of Ann Arbor, Michigan.[1] It sold under the name "interact Model One home computer". The original Ineract Model One computer was designed by Rick Barnich and Tim Anderson at 204 E. Washington in Ann Arbor, then moving to an office in Georgetown Mall on Packard St in Ann Arbor. Interact Electronics Inc was a privately held company that was funded by Hongiman, Miller, Swartz and Cohn...a lawyer firm out of Detroit. The President/Founder of Interact Electronics Inc was Ken Lochner, who was one of the original developers of the BASIC language based out of Dartmouth college. Ken had started Interact Electronics Inc after a successful startup known as ADP Cyphernetics, the original computer time share company in Ann Arbor, now known as ADP Network Services. Only a few thousand Interacts were sold before the company went bankrupt. Most were sold by the liquidator Protecto Enterprizes of Barrington, Illinois through mail order sales. The Interact Model One Home Computer debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in June 1978 at a price of $499. The majority of sales were thru Mail Order houses and you could buy it off the shelf at Highland Appliance in the Detroit, MI area and Newman Computer Exchange in Ann Arbor. Probably the most successful application available for the Interace was a program called "Message Center". With it, a store could type in whatever message they wanted to appear scrolling on a TV screen...like Advertisements, or welcoming messages to guests in an office. Although it was mostly a Game machine at the time with games such as Showdown, BlackJack, Chess there was also BASIC programming where users could create their own programs in the BASIC computer language. Customers began hooking up Interact to control everything from lights in their house, to a Chevrolet Corvette! Later on the design was sold to a French company, and re-branded as the "Victor Lambda" for the French market.
Technical specifications
- CPU: Intel i8080, 2.0 MHz
- Memory: 8K RAM, expandable to 16K RAM; 2K ROM
- Keyboard: 53-key chiclet
- Display: 17 x 12 text; eight colors, 112 x 78 graphics, four colors
- Sound: One voice, four octaves
- Ports: Television, two joysticks
- Built-in cassette recorder (1200 Bps)
- PSU: External AC transformer
- 1980 price $300 USD (equivalent to $863 in 2015)
References
- ↑ "Interact Home Computer System". Retrieved 24 July 2013.