Keyboard Builders' Digest / History
Honeywell H316 kitchen computer
Some thoughts in defense of the often ridiculed Honeywell H316 kitchen computer.
Published March 26, 2023
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.
Input method
If the 4KB memory combined with a $10,600 price tag (that would mean $86,900 in 2023) wouldn't make you suspicious enough that some paper and a pen would be a better alternative to keep track of your recipes in every imaginable aspect, the fact the H316 had to be programmed with a binary mindset and "responded" with binary lights, should scare off the most determined housewife and loving husband – even half a century later.
In their defense, the Neiman-Marcus catalog offered the system with a two-week programming course to learn how to input and recover your favorite recipes. :D
Joke aside, in a real-life situation (definitely not in a suburban kitchen) you could interface it with a teletypewriter (to have a keyboard), and a wide variety of fridge-size data storage options (magnetic tape, disc storage, small mass storage, paper tape reader/punch unit, etc) to squeeze out more performance from this 75kg behemoth compared to a humble old-school recipe booklet.
And let's debunk another myth, that the H316 pedestal had a built-in cutting board. As we can see it in the photo below, taken from the 1969 Honeywell brochure, it was more of an arm rest or small desk if you will.
No user in his/her right mind would cut onions on a device worth this much.
PR campaign or serious business?
Looking at old N-M catalogs, and the Neiman-Marcus Christmas Book 1969 featuring the H316 was no exception, they were a collection of expensive and silly gift ideas – e.g. your own life-sized Noah's Ark replica, matching "his & her" airplanes, etc.
Among a series of outrageously expensive and impractical "gifts" in the catalog, along with the H316, the most pricey item was 100,000 gallons (economy size!) of Aramis men's cologne for only five million dollars, delivered to your home starting with fifty 5-gallon jugs maybe as an advance delivery…
You can't help but think the kitchen computer had to be a prank too. Some articles even claim that this computer was a vaporware, a product that was announced but never made. However, the truth is, and this may confirm the PR stunt theory, that the H316 "kitchen computer" existed way before the time these ads went into print. There were several photos of the pedestal version in the 1969 Honeywell H316 brochure without any reference to kitchen use.
Significance
Anyway, since the H316 existed in three different variants, we can think of the pedestal version benevolently as a PR stunt. While not a single unit of this particular variant was sold by Neiman Marcus, Honeywell sold some. The computer caught the public's attention, so the company ended up producing 20 units to be used mainly as floor models.
According Gardner Hendrie, program manager for the Honeywell H316, the ad campaign was a brilliant idea, and some people did actually buy this machine.
Resulting in a hell of a collector item and one of the Holy Grails of retrocomputing enthusiasts. (With the only known kitchen-style H316 in existence at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA.)
Other than that, it may have had an impact on the future of home computers:
The Honeywell Kitchen Computer remains in history as the first exclusively consumer computer, opening the public's taste of using technology for personal purposes.
The silly Neiman-Marcus catalog, first published in 1941, contributed to this by featuring the H316 and bringing it to 500,000 customers.
What's even more interesting? The remarkable N-M catalog was "recorded" on a Honeywell computer.
Specs
- Released: 1969
- Produced: 20 units
- Price: $10,600 (that would mean $86,900 in 2023)
- CPU: 0.6MHz
- Memory: 4KB, expandable to 16K (In due respect, this is probably 4K words (16-bit).)
- Display: Binary lights
- Weight: 45kg/100lbs (probably the rack-mounted one) - 75kg/150lbs (probably the pedestal one)
- Special Features: Built-in cutting board
Resources
- https://www.theregister.com/Print/2008/11/27/tob_kitchen_computer/
- https://www.wired.com/2012/11/kitchen-computer/
- https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/minicomputers/11/362/2003
- http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Honeywell/Honeywell.H316.1965.102646157.pdf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316
- https://drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/if-you-cant-stand-the-coding-stay-out-of/184404040?queryText=spicer%2Bkitchen
- https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/clear-the-kitchen-table-how-apple-and-ibm-marketed-the-first-personal-computers/396047/
Published on Sun 26th Mar 2023. Featured in KBD #117.
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