Honeywell H316 kitchen computer
Some thoughts in defense of the often ridiculed Honeywell H316 kitchen computer.
Hey, this monstrosity has no keyboard at all! So what is it doing on kbd.news? Firstly, I was pretty sure I've written about this Honeywell kitchen computer somewhere, someday. In fact, I was so sure about this that when I came across the poster below I thought I'd add it to my original post for the sake of completeness. But it turned out there's no such article, at least I can't find it anywhere.
So let me correct this deficiency: here is a post on specifically the "Kitchen Computer" incarnation of the Honeywell H316 general purpose computer – often introduced as the computer with a built-in cutting board, or the $70-90K machine no one bought.
First things first: Seeing the part midcentury-modern, part ridiculously retrofuturistic design, people may often forget that the original H316 was a rack-mountable unit which was much less extravagant. But Honeywell presented two other designs, "packagings" if you will, of the same computer: there were "table-top and pedestal configurations" available as well. This latter being the infamous kitchen computer.
The base computer, the intestines, were identical, and the rack-mountable variant, which was built on the DDP-116 designed by 3C, made a name as part of the Arpanet, predecessor of Internet.
So let's see why this project, the kitchen one, was deemed, maybe erroneously, a total disaster. As Austine Modine ponders in a 2008 issue of The Register, there are countless examples of failed technological endeavors, ones with serious faults compromising basic usability, but the Honeywell H316 stands out from even a line-up of the most carefully selected contenders based on pure ridiculousness. Simply because:
[…]none, to this reporter's knowledge, sold a total of zero units. […] A computer that no fool on Earth would purchase requires machinery so decadent and impractical, so awash up in the dream that super-science will simplify our lives, that it could only arrive in a Neiman-Marcus holiday catalog.
Indeed, the Honeywell H316 was notoriously featured in a 1969 Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog, presented as a cutting-edge PC made for suburban housewives for storing their recipes – the obvious task of computers before the era of home computers carved out a more versatile set of user cases.
However, there were some fundamental issues with this targeting.
... continue reading