A nice read from Creatures of Thought (previously here, here, and here) about the dramatic years of the 8 bit home computer.
Shatner vs Asimov vs Cosby vs Alda, according to the adverts.
Bringing it here in part because of a little bit about the Green Thumb project which gave rise to Tandy’s CoCo.
Oddly enough, the creation of the Color Computer (affectionately known as CoCo) began with a 1978 federal grant, for a computer system to disseminate information to Kentucky tobacco farmers. The Department of Agriculture called it Project Green Thumb. Tandy submitted a joint proposal with Motorola to build the terminals for the Green Thumb system, on which farmers could call up relevant information from a database, such as guidelines on pesticide use. The proposed terminal had a twelve-button keypad, a Motorola-designed graphics chip for displaying text or images on a TV screen, and a modem for connecting to the central computer over a telephone line. The Tandy/Motorola bid succeeded, and the information system launched in March 1980, with hundreds of Tandy/Motorola terminals.