CODY — Tom Osborne grew up in this historic Western town, attended Cody High School and graduated from the University of Wyoming. In itself, that’s nothing special.
What is special is “The Green Machine” device he spent years engineering in his bedroom, which would revolutionize the computer industry and became the shape of things to come.
Osborne’s prototype became the blueprint for the Hewlett-Packard 9100A, considered the world’s first “personal computer.” It was the first of several groundbreaking technologies the Cody native contributed to that would change the world forever.
“I remember the overwhelming realization that sitting in front of me on a red card table in the corner of our bedroom/workshop sat more computing power per unit volume than had ever existed on this planet,” Osborne wrote in a 1994 letter. “I felt more like the discoverer of the object before me than its creator.”
That was 1964, and even then he could envision how his invention could change how people worked and lived.
“I thought of things to come,” he wrote. “If I could do this alone in my tiny apartment, then there were some big changes in store for the world.”
In the 20th Century, you couldn’t find a more dyed-in-the-wool Cody family than the Osbornes. This makes it more remarkable that one of them would go on to help lay the foundation of the 21st century and beyond.
The Delinquent Whiz
Cody historian Bob Richard knows nearly everything and everybody in and about the city’s history, but his connections to Tom Osborne and his family are more personal.
“His dad ran Pahaska Tepee Resort,” Richard told Cowboy State Daily. “I wrangled horses up there for two frosts. Sam Osborne kept an eye on me because I was about 16 years old and made sure that I rented, wrangled and took care of them.”
Tom Osborne was a few years ahead of Richard at Cody High School. At that time, Osborne was already known as an intelligent student who “was going places,” he said.
“He was a whiz in high school,” Richard said. “Very good in science and math and involved in a lot of activities before he drifted off.”
Osborne’s recollections of his childhood in Cody were more rambunctious.
“Norman Johnson, who also worked at HP later on, and I were probably the terrorists of the Cody area,” he said in a 2008 interview. “We were messing around with all kinds of crazy things, including pyrotechnics. Why we didn’t end up in jail is beyond me, but we didn’t.”
Osborne said he and Johnson laid the foundations for their careers by dismantling and rebuilding pinball machines. Their first foray into electrical engineering was getting lessons from Phil Barnhart, chief engineer at the local radio station.
“We asked so many questions that Phil said, ‘You’re wasting my time. Why don’t I teach you electronics?’” Osborne said. “So, he did, and that was really where it started. It was enlightening to have the power to be able to make things do what you wanted them to do.”
Richard said he benefitted from Osborne’s intelligence before he went on to change the world with his technological achievements.
“He was ahead of me in school, and he was definitely somebody that I went to when I needed help in math or something,” he said.
Bedroom Breakthrough
Osborne graduated from Cody High School in 1953 and the University of Wyoming in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. The Class of 1957 named Osborne “an outstanding electrical engineer” by his graduation.
He married Carol DeKay the same year he graduated from UW and spent the next three years in the U.S. Air Force as a meteorologist with Strategic Air Command, being discharged at the rank of 1st lieutenant in 1960.
Osborne was working on a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of California at Berkley when he conceived of “a desktop calculator.”
“The desktop calculator began early in 1964,” Osborne told the Cody Enterprise in 1968. “I could not see any reason why it should not begin. I thought that existing electronic calculators left a lot to be desired. Also, I developed a technique in graduate school that provided the confidence I needed to start on such a venture. Armed with this data and a corner of the bedroom, I spent the next year constructing the original calculator.”
The technique Osborne referred to was the “rediscovery” of the Finite State Machine, a mathematical model of computation that a machine’s behavior can be in one of its many “states” at a time. Osborne worked on transforming the model into “very efficient digital circuitry.”
Osborne spent the next two years in the corner of his bedroom, working on a complex circuitry for a desktop calculator. He called it “The Green Machine” because he painted the calculator’s housing, which was made of balsa wood and Elmer’s glue, a metallic green used by General Motors.
“In 1963, I was unemployed, miffed, but well-armed with good design techniques,” Osborne wrote in a 1994 letter. “Carol had a good job, so we were not about to starve. We discussed the options and decided to go ahead and build a calculator.”
On Christmas Eve 1964, “The Green Machine” was fully functional.
Osborne described it as a glimpse into a limitless future that started in the same space where he had meticulously worked to perfect his design.
“Even at that time, it had a lot of state-of-the-art features,” Osborne said in the 2008 interview. “It was a big cost, but I thought I could do it and learned a lot along the way.”
The Right Future
Osborne said he “spent more money than I thought existed” to get a patent application ready for his calculator while trying to find a manufacturer for his revolutionary machine. It proved to be more difficult than he anticipated.
“The following year was spent selling the calculator,” he told the Cody Enterprise. “It is quite a task to find a company that simultaneously has the technical competence, manufacturing capability, marketing organization and the willingness to accept a device from an outside source.”
After a frustrating series of rejections from several companies, Osborne got a call from Paul Stoft at Hewlett-Packard (HP). A former coworker of Osborne’s told Stoft that Osborne “had a reputation for making things that worked.”
After an initial meeting with Stoft, Osborne was asked to return the next day to meet with “Dave and Bill.” Osborne didn’t know he was being asked to meet with Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who founded HP in a Palo Alto garage in 1939.
“The meeting the next day was memorable,” Osborne wrote. “Nothing like it had occurred with the previous companies. It appeared to me that while other companies were looking for a weakness that might preclude them from success, HP was looking for the opportunity to might lead to a success.”
Within a few weeks, Osborne received a check from HP to upgrade his Green Machine prototype into something that could be manufactured and sold to the masses. Osborne oversaw a team of engineers while doing most of the circuit design himself.
After two and a half years of development, the HP 9100A was introduced in March 1968.
The 40-pound unit, marketed as “ready, willing and able” to perform several complex functions quickly and precisely, was sold for $4,900 a unit, which would be more than $44,000 today.
The hefty HP 9100A was marketed to the broader world as a desktop calculator. While that was undoubtedly an accurate description, Osborne and HP knew they had developed something more revolutionary than that.
"If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM,” Bill Hewlett once said. “We, therefore, decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared."
The size and function of the HP 9100A made it completely unlike most computers available at the time. History regards it as the world’s first “personal computer,” decades before the term and the concept would become ubiquitous in every facet of life.
So Long, Slide Rule
Osborne’s next technological breakthrough resulted from a challenge Hewlett presented to him.
“Bill Hewlett said, ‘I think the next machine should be a 10th the cost, a 10th the size and be 10 times faster than the HP 9100,’” Osborne wrote. “I knew he was serious, but we were kept hostage by the lack of low-power integrated circuits.”
Hewlett (and his contracts in the U.S. Department of Defense) wanted something that could fit in a briefcase. Osborne assessed the technological limitations at the time and joined a team of other HP engineers to achieve the monumental task of building a portable computer.
“It seems as if the HP 35 had a life of its own,” Osborne wrote. “It simply chose HP as its birthplace.”
After years of “just plain fun” development and an endorsement from his mother-in-law, Osborne and the other HP engineers presented Hewlett with the world’s first pocket calculator. It was released as the HP-35 in 1972.
“It had no name until we were about to introduce it,” Osborne wrote. “I asked Bill if he had any preferences. We had kicked around a few somewhat wild names, but none seemed quite right. Bill looked at the machine for a minute or so and said, ‘Let’s call it the HP-35.’ It sounded OK to me, but why the 35? He smiled and said, ‘Well, it has 35 keys.’
The HP-35 was less than 6 inches long and just over 3 inches wide (the size of Hewlett’s shirt pocket). Still, it could calculate arithmetic, logarithmic and trigonometric functions on an LED display, all for the low price of $395 (around $3,000 today).
“We had no idea whether the HP-35 would be a success or a dud,” Osborne wrote, “Anyway, we gave it our all and found that it was so well received that overnight, it made the slide rule a relic.”
The HP-35 became the first scientific calculator in space in 1973. But Osborne didn’t rest on his laurels, helping to make his revolutionary calculator with the development of the HP-65 in 1974, which he called “far and away my favorite project.”
“The slides were greased for the HP-65, the world's first programmable shirt pocket calculator,” he wrote. “That, too, was a super project. When we introduced the HP-65 with its tiny internal mag reader, I could hear the competitors’ projects fall by the wayside.”
The HP-35 was the evolution of "pocket" calculating computers developed by Cody native Thomas E. Osborne after his "Green Machine" prototype became the world's first personal computer. (National Museum of American History) 
The HP-65 was the second generation of "pocket" calculating computers developed by Cody native Thomas E. Osborne. (National Museum of American History)
Cody Born And Bred
Osborne’s Green Machine was obsolete when it reached one of its greatest heights.
In 1978, the prototype “personal computer” was added to the collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, followed by the HP-35 and the HP-65.
“They changed the world we live in,” Osborne wrote. “I am truly honored to have worked with and for a company whose underlying principle and business is that of providing the world with products that allow it to be a better place.”
Osborne’s success resulted from his tenacity, talent and intelligence. However, Richard thought it was notable that the foundation for a mind that changed the world came from an educational upbringing in Cody.
“A lot of us that grew up here had good math and English teachers,” he said. “They even tried to teach us to spell, but it didn't work very well. But Osborne was a whiz, one of the best there was.”
Osborne continued working with “the HP basic stuff” until he decided the company had so many talented engineers that it no longer needed him.
Despite his integral role in a critical period in the history of computer technology, Osborne has stayed out of the limelight since leaving HP. He said his true rewards were “the people I met along the way.”
“When HP-65 first turned on, I said what it was to be,” he said in 2008. “Other people did, and that brought me a lot of great satisfaction. That freed a lot of people who understood problems but were not experts (to) hack their way through and get their solutions much better than an expert programmer. The person who understands the problem is the person you want to talk to.”
Contact Andrew Rossi at arossie@cowboystatedaily.com
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
