A large toy shop in a shopping mall in Pennsylvania on a Saturday in autumn, at the end of an aisle a low demonstration table, on it a long flat home computer in warm light grey plastic with a rounded front edge and five fine grooves along the back, dark brown keys and four tall keys in a separate block at the right, every key plain, smooth and unmarked, a black joystick with a red button, a colour television glowing with bright soft blocks of colour, a child's hand reaching up from the lower edge of the frame, shelves of plush bears and a red rocking horse behind.
What it was used for
Home computer, built from August 1982 and, per Guinness World Records, until April 1994. The Computer History Museum gives 595 dollars, 1.023 MHz and 64 KB of memory. It could be hooked up to an ordinary television and was used for games, productivity software and BASIC. The sales channel is notable: the Computer History Museum states that many were sold through retail stores that had never sold computers before.
What was new
What marks it is not one component but the mix the Computer History Museum credits for its success: simplicity, low cost, better graphics, good sound, game software and aggressive marketing — 64 KB for 595 dollars. The barb is in the number itself. Guinness World Records lists 12,500,000 units and calls the exact count uncertain; Commodore's 1993 annual report is said to give 17 million; Jack Tramiel estimated 22 to 30 million at a 2007 Computer History Museum event. A serial-number study arrives at 12,681,839 boards. The best-selling desktop computer model in the world is the one with the most disputed figure.
What the sources leave open: The 17 million from the 1993 annual report is only reported at second hand (pagetable.com after Marc Walters, confirmed by Peter Kittel); the report itself was not available. The serial-number study is an estimate with a known bias towards North America. The Computer History Museum's object page states about 30 million.