John V. Blankenbaker, born in 1929 to a farming family in Oklahoma, is best known as the man who made the world’s first personal computer. His Kenbak-1 machine first went on sale in 1971—some five years before Steve Wozniak released Apple I. When Blankenbaker was a freshman at Oregon State College in 1949, he started the design of a computing device. By 1957, he had envisioned a simple computer, which he described in a paper, “Logically Micro-Programmed Computers,” published in Computer Transactions. In 1970, he began the design of Kenbak-1 as a private endeavor in his Los Angeles garage. The next year he founded Kenbak Corporation and built and sold about 40 Kenbak-1 digital computers, mainly to schools, before selling out to CTI Educational Products and shuttering his company entirely in 1973. Blankenbaker retired in 1985 and currently lives in Pennsylvania.
Note: Much like Douglas Englebart, Blankenbaker is another example of personal computing pioneers who graduated from Oregon State University.
