PDP-8

An original DEC PDP-8 on display at Bletchley Park: two tinted cabinets of circuit cards above a front panel of toggle switches and lights, small enough to stand on a plinth in a corner. Launched in the mid-1960s at $18,000, about a fifth of the price of a small IBM System/360, it was the first commercially successful minicomputer and sold by the thousands. That price put a whole computer inside a single lab, factory or hospital department, and it is the step between the corporate mainframe and the personal computer.