Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
The Floppy Disks Preferred By Cookie Elves Who Use PCs
By bohus
Occasionally a TV ad will update the image of Santa's workshop. Santa pushes aside his inkwell and quill pen to make way for a snazzy new computer - but that's just to help him put together his big trip once a year. What about the other elves in this world faced with logistical challenges all year round?
Keebler has been baking for more than a century, and today is the largest manufacturer of cookies and crackers. In addition to their own signature snacks, back in the 30s they were the first official baker of Girl Scout Cookies (they continue to bake the much coveted cookies today). Before that, the scouts' moms handled it all. Moms really are amazing, aren't they?
The Keebler elves first appeared in 1968 in animated commercials, and went on to be one of the most recognized advertising mascots in the world. We see the elves in the commercials craft each snack by hand, but we never saw any computers or automation. So my question is, how do they explain these floppy disks?
These green (not in the current ecological sense of the word) floppies are double-sided double-density 3.5" disks. The more common 1.44 megabyte HD format of "microfloppy" would come later. These hold a mere 720k. I'm tempted to look at what's on these discs, but I'm certain that the files have elaborate passwords like "ch33z-its" or "elfudge123".
Here's a typical Keebler commercial from the 80s.For voiceover nerds like myself, that's Peter Leeds as the coach elf, Paul Winchell (voice of Tigger & Gargamel) as "Buckets" the rookie, and Walker Edmiston as Ernie the Elf.
Even without looking at the contents of these discs, we can learn one important thing. These floppies come pre-formatted for DOS, which means that those frisky elves resolved the whole PC vs. Mac issue. These days they may have moved on to using tablet computers - tablets whose screens I imagine are constantly covered with tiny fudgy fingerprints - but at least at one point in the 80s we had DOS to thank for our Chips Deluxe and Van'chos.
