1965 The PDP-8: The first ‘personal’ computer for engineers and scientists ushered in the minicomputer era

“Your computer killed 14 000 of my chickens!” squawked the voice on the telephone. A power outage had scrambled part of the core memory in a DEC PDP-8 minicomputer that controlled heat lamps in a hen-house. Unable to restart, the machine failed to turn on the lights, and thousands of day-old chicks died.