Thirty years ago today, on July 23, 1985, the Amiga was introduced in a star-studded gala featuring Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry at the Lincoln Center in New York City. Warhol demonstrated the Amiga’s incredible graphics capabilities by “painting” an on-screen portrait of Debbie Harry as attendees looked on.
The Amiga (which later was called the Amiga 1000) began shipping in September, and I got mine in early October at Chaney Computer in Newport News, VA. I have reason to believe it was the first unit sold in the state of Virginia. I took the photo above shortly after I brought it home, in my bedroom in York County, VA in late 1985. I still have this photo of my first Amiga, framed, sitting atop the third Amiga 1000 I’ve owned, down in my Byte Cellar.
Happy birthday, Amiga.
A few other Amiga-related posts I’ve made over the years:
There’s something really akin in discussing the Amiga computer and Deborah Harry. Both were more popular in foreign markets than here, and both had a definite point in time associated with them. Here in the US, Harry was huge for a three or so year span and just vanished after that. I think she had hit records solo and a big hit with Blondie in ’99 in several countries. Zero radio play in the US, though.
When I got my first iPod, I quit listening to the radio so I have no idea if she ever did get any airplay more recently, but I doubt it.
I never did own an Amiga: I wound up having a friend of mine give me a set of bootleg NeXT install discs and I built a PC up with an Adaptec 2940 SCSI card to run it, then I got a big check and stupidly bought a new Sun Sparc 5. Looking back the Amiga would have been more fun.