Q1 Corporation - the inventor of the first microcomputers Q1 Computers

Q1 Corporation in New York, owned by Daniel Alroy, was the first company to develop a complete, standalone, microcomputer system integrated with a screen and keyboard and floppydrives. It was first sold in december 1972, based on the Intel 8008 processor that was introduced on the marked only 8 month earlier, in april 1972.

The later version Q1 Lite from 1976-1977 was widely sold in Europe, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, etc. and based on a Z80 processor, 2708 eproms etc. My versions (see the pictures below of the Q1 Lite) has the Swedish character eprom for the nordic/scandinavian letters (æ ø å etc.)

The first Q1 computer released in december 1972:

The first Q1 computer from 1972 was a typewirter design, a single-line 80 character display, 16K memory, floppy drives, build in printer, and PL/1 high-level programming language and assembler - with "Powerfull utility and library" and they wrote on the sales brochure. It was very impressive, and aimed to all from accounting to wordprocessing machines, to scientific calculators.

The first generation of Q1 does not exist today - as far as I know! Two Q1 Lite computers was found in London in feb. 2024, and was described to the world (news papers, social media etc) as being "Two of the very first micro computers in the world", 2 out of 3 known in the world. And "The world’s first true microcomputer – the Q1 – is currently on display".... But this is a mistake, wrong information. The machines found was the 2nd generation of Q1 Lite, NOT the first from dec. 1972. I have contacted Paul Neve from Kingston University, and he agreed that he was wrong here and the information was not correct, but I have not been able to get Kingston University to correct this information with a press release, nor correct it with an updated article. The article with the false information is still published around the world, even weeks and months after.