Nanocomputer cartoon
“This nanocomputer is great...
if only the keyboard weren't so hard to type on!”
 When I was 7 or 8 years old, my parents got our first computer, a Sinclair ZX81. Fascinated as I was with this machine, my father took me one day to an electronics bookstore to purchase a programming manual for me to use. While at the bookstore, I saw a book with a cartoon on the front. I no longer remember what that book was about, but as I recall the cartoon looked something like the image shown here. My apologies to the original cartoonist; my version is a blatant rip-off, created only because I have no way to track down the original.

I can only assume what the intended humorous value of this cartoon was supposed to be. Perhaps it was to point out how ludicrous it would be to type on such a small keyboard. The bitter irony, of course, is that nowadays we all blissfully use a vastly inferior input device — namely, a glass touchscreen — as part of our everyday computing life.

On another note, “nanocomputers” as such never really did catch on. It is now well over 20 years since I first came across this cartoon, and the fundamental design of the personal computer has not changed all that much.
Back to Cartoons main page