Antedating of the Term "Personal Computer"

[Shapiro, Fred]

The Oxford English Dictionary Supplement's entry for the term "personal computer" had a first use dated 1976.  I then published an article in the Annals of the History of Computing in 2000, presenting a 1968 citation.  Barry Popik improved upon that with a terrific 1959 citation from Datamation magazine, which currently stands as the earliest cite in the OED.  Now I have a 1954 occurrence:

1954 Willis H. Ware _The Digital Computer: Where Does It Go from Here?_ (Rand Corporation, P-608)  15  Machines will be everywhere. ... Medical diagnosis will be more certain as a result of machine assistance.  A doctor need no longer remember the symptoms of every conceivable disease.  His personal computer can do it for him, printing a list of all diseases fitting a stated set of symptoms.

Fred Shapiro
Editor
YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)

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