Micro Sistemas

Micro Sistemas launched in Rio de Janeiro in October 1981, priced at Cr$ 200,00, describing itself as “a primeira publicação dedicada exclusivamente aos microcomputadores e calculadoras programáveis” — the first publication devoted exclusively to microcomputers and programmable calculators. This library holds 65 issues, running to July 1995.

Its first issue is earlier than all but one British title held here. Your Computer precedes it by four months; Computer & Video Games follows it by one.

“The dream is over”

The editorial on page four is titled O Sonho Começou — the dream has begun — and it opens somewhere no computer magazine opens:

“Há poucos meses a bala de um assassino encerrou, inapelavelmente, uma época que já estava virtualmente terminada. Chorando John Lennon, milhões de jovens e pais de jovens, no mundo inteiro, tristemente murmuravam: o sonho acabou. Assim é a vida: a cada instante há sonhos acabando, e sonhos começando.”

A few months earlier an assassin’s bullet had closed an era that was already virtually over; mourning John Lennon, millions murmured the dream is over. Such is life — at every moment there are dreams ending and dreams beginning. And one of the beginning ones, the sentence continues, is this magazine.

The same editorial states the expectation plainly: “tal como aconteceu nos países que nos antecederam neste caminho, as fábricas e marcas vão se multiplicar” — just as happened in the countries that came before us on this road, the factories and brands will multiply. Factories, not importers. That is the assumption the rest of the issue runs on.

The issue is a snapshot of a market being built

Around the editorial sits a first issue unlike a British one of the same year.

• The cover story is a Brazilian machine: “O D-8000 é o primeiro lance da DISMAC na disputa do mercado brasileiro de computadores pessoais.”
• A feature visits a primary school in Tijuca where five hundred children aged two to ten are taught with a computer, and the head teacher explains that manufacturers’ leaflets had “muitas fotos bonitas e poucas informações” — lots of pretty photographs and little information.
• A chess feature asks whether man or machine will be Grande Mestre, with the president of the Brazilian Chess Confederation.
• A report covers a visit by Wayne Green, editor of the American Kilobaud and 80 Microcomputing.
• On page two, a shop advertisement: Computique, a boutique dos computadores, in the Cassino Atlântico shopping centre on Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana.

The interview that explains the machines

The issue’s long interview is with Oscar Alegre, commercial director of DISMAC, and it is the most valuable thing in it. He begins by welcoming the arrival of the first Brazilian magazine devoted to microcomputing, and then sets out the reasoning behind Brazil’s market reserve — including why a Brazilian computer cost more than an imported one, and why that was accepted.

⚠ This entry is built from issue 1 and from the shape of the holdings. This library holds fourteen years of Micro Sistemas and no secondary account of it, so nothing here describes how it changed, or how Brazilian readers regarded it. Its claim to be the first Brazilian microcomputer magazine is its own, made on its own first page, and this Vault has no independent Brazilian source to test it against.

See also

• Brazil’s market reserve — the policy the interview describes
• DISMAC — the manufacturer on the cover
• Pixel — the Greek equivalent, launched two years later
• MC-microcomputer — the Italian one, launched a month earlier