From R.Rhea via Bill Fane comes this invoice for a CAD workstation in 1981. I've left out the customer and sales firm.
I couldn't find a picture of the Omnitech TM-1 workstation, although Omnitech is still around and today produces CNC machines. Here is a picture of the Techtronix display, which was a vector display -- it displayed graphics as bright lines on the green background. (Unlike today's raster displays, it needed no memory to remember the display refresh.) I remember using one in about 1980 while still at university.
Here is a picture of the CalComp flatbed plotter (both pix from Wikipedia). It's nearly as tall as a person:
As I recall a fairly decent performer for its' time. I logged alot of hours on the 4014. That was a screamer then.
Posted by: billd | Feb 14, 2012 at 04:59 PM
Going from memory, as I no longer have access to original Purchase Order, but...
I remember, too, the first Engineering Workstation purchased by my former employer circa 1986
A Compaq 386/20 with 4MB memory, co-porocessor, 10MB HD - $16,000 or so
There was an Nth Engine Graphic cards @ $4,000 (We were using VersaCAD/386 5.4)
And an HP Draftmaster I pen plotter, which I seem to recall as being about $16,000 or so as well
Oh! how times have changed
Posted by: Jim Longley | Feb 15, 2012 at 05:40 AM
Cad has really come a long way and improving steady. I could imaging working from one of those machine today.
Posted by: Rick | Feb 23, 2012 at 11:35 AM
Do you reckon that invoice is typewritten (as with typewriter) rather than printed?
I remember 3 of us having to share 'The AutoCAD machine' when I was at tech in 1985.
Posted by: RobiNZ | Feb 29, 2012 at 09:01 PM
Yes, it was very much typewritten. They didn't use a computer to print their letter!
Of course, back then, printing was not easy. Daisy-wheel printers did a nice job, but were expensive and could not do graphics; dot-matrix printers were cheaper (well, $750 was the price of my first one, in 1983) but printed rough text with just 8 pins. Laser printers for personal computers were not available until 1983, and then cost $12,800 from HP.
Posted by: Ralph Grabowski | Mar 01, 2012 at 05:34 PM
Of course this letter was done on a typewriter. At that time a word processor was made by Wang and probably cost as much as that CAD workstation.
Posted by: Kim Corbridge | Mar 06, 2012 at 05:30 AM