kludge
パソコンを初めて商品として消費者に販売を開始した方が紹介されております。商品化したのはアップルやIBMよりも早かったとあります。開発者のBlankenbaker氏は，自身のコンピューターが普及しなかった理由としてマーケティングの失敗を挙げております。教育利用に有効だと判断し，学校に売り込んでいたのですが，学校の意思決定が長期に及んでしまったため，なかなか販売ができなかったようです。もしも最初から小売りなどに営業をかけていれば，Blankenbaker氏の会社が，パーソナルコンピューター市場を席巻していたかもしれません。
記事の中で気になった単語は"kludge"です。『Wisdom英和辞典第三版』（三省堂）には，意味が載っておりませんでした。ODで調べると名詞には"An ill-assorted collection of parts assembled to fulfil a particular purpose"，動詞は，"Improvise or put together from an ill-assorted collection of parts"という定義でした。「ありあわせのパーツでなんとか取り組む」という意味でしょうか。ODの語源を見ると"1960s: invented word, perhaps influenced by bodge and fudge"とあり，1960年代に生まれた比較的新しい表現のようです。（Ume）
The man who made 'the world's first personal computer'
As it happens, the costs involved meant the computer had to be sold for $750 (about $4,400 in 2015) . Ironically it's a price that would be considered an investment nowadays, when one considers that a prototype Kenbak-1 sold for $31,000 at Bonhams in New York last month.
Now one of the few remaining existing production models is expected to sell for between 20,000 ($22,000; £14,400) and 40,000 euros when it goes up for auction in Germany on Saturday, 7 November.
By the time Kenbak Corporation closed in 1973 it had completed one production run of just 50 computers, and is now virtually unknown today. Mr Blankenbaker says that as well as US sales, there were also buyers from France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, and Canada.
Pioneer days
Mr Blankenbaker, now 85, and retired to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, first became interested in computers when he was a first year physics student in the 1940s.
"When I was a freshman at Oregon State College in 1949, I read about Eniac (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer)," he says.
"This inspired me to design a computing device. It was a kludge but it inspired an interest in computers."
