Health and Human Services Logo

  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | National Institutes of Health

Computing at NIH

Versions Compared

Old Version 22

changes.mady.by.user Swan, Jeremy (NIH/NICHD) [C]

Saved on

compared with

New Version 23

changes.mady.by.user Swan, Jeremy (NIH/NICHD) [C]

Saved on

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

...

Div
classusa-grid
Div
classusa-width-one-half

Classic Macintosh Computer
Macintosh Classic

Div
classusa-width-one-half
“Not long after I acquired the computer, I published five first-author scientific papers…in one year.” So said Dr. Thomas Wehr, NIMH, about his Apple M0420. 

While critics dismissed the Macintosh Classic M0420 for having slow processing speeds, it was extremely popular due to its low price—less than $1000 if you didn’t require a hard disk. The low price combined with the availability of educational software made the Mac Classic the computer of choice for school systems in the early 1990s. Even after factoring in the additional cost of up to 4MB of RAM, its relatively low cost attracted new computer users such as Wehr, who didn’t require the extra computing power of an SE/30 or Macintosh II.  While this was the last Apple computer to use the 8 MHz 68000 CPU (all future models would have at least 16 MHz of processing power), it did have some unique features, such as the ability to boot from ROM by holding down “command-option-x-o” at startup, and screen brightness control through a keyboard-controlled “brightness control panel” rather than a knob. 

The spread of personal computers allowed scientists to easily write and edit their ideas, leading to faster publications. After acquiring the Mac Classic, Wehr said that it “revolutionized [his] approach to data-analysis, graphics and writing.” Wehr, the former chief of the Clinical Psychobiology Branch at NIMH, is best known for his research on the effects of light on the secretion of melantonin and on sleep. Wehr and NIMH colleague Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal identified and described Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and developed light therapy to treat it well before Wehr’s success was amplified by the Mac Classic. Wehr went on to co-author “Circadian Rhythms in Psychiatry (Psychobiology and Psychopathology)” with Frederick Goodwin. [13.0014.002]

Laptop

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100, c. 1980

...
Return to top