Press Kit
Go Computer Now! How Sphere Corporation Invented the Modern Microcomputer—Then Disappeared, by Ben Zotto.
Contact
- Author
- Ben Zotto
- info@gocomputernow.com
- More
- About the author · Book homepage
Get in touch for any inquiries including talks, podcasts, Hot Ones attempts, etc.
About the book
Logline
Go Computer Now! is the untold story of Sphere, the tiny Utah company that beat Apple and Commodore to market with an all-in-one desktop computer in 1975, before vanishing from history.
Brief description
In 1975, tiny Utah company Sphere shipped an all-in-one desktop computer—integrated keyboard and screen, priced for an individual—well before Apple, Commodore, and Radio Shack. But Sphere came apart and vanished from the record. Drawing on archival research and new interviews, technologist Ben Zotto recovers the story of Sphere: its fragile machine, its visionary founder, and the community that loved it.
Full description
Go Computer Now! is the untold story of Sphere, the tiny Utah company that beat Apple, Commodore, and Radio Shack to market with an all-in-one desktop computer in 1975, before vanishing from history. Fifty years later, technologist and author Ben Zotto brings Sphere back to life on the page: how it was founded by young visionary Mike Wise to make computing accessible, how it shipped a forward-looking but fragile desktop system to customers who'd seen nothing like it, then how the company came apart, leaving behind a small community of people who cherished their challenging machines.
Combining deep archival research with dozens of new interviews, the book includes extensive (often never-before-seen) photography of the people, products, and places of Sphere. Go Computer Now! is a vivid story about seeing into tomorrow at a moment when anyone with an idea and an advertisement could launch a factory and build that future. It's the account of a handful of pioneers who did just that, yet remained obscure, until now.
Book facts
- Title
- Go Computer Now! How Sphere Corporation Invented the Modern Microcomputer—Then Disappeared
- Author
- Ben Zotto
- Format
- 448 pages, hardcover with printed dust jacket. Designed, edited, and offset-printed in full color to trade-publishing standards (not print-on-demand).
- Price
- US $39.00 retail
- Published
- April 2, 2026 by Electric Machine Ltd.
- ISBN-13
- 979-8-99-871060-5
- Availability
- gocomputernow.com (author site, preferred) · Amazon
About the author
Ben Zotto is a technologist and writer who quite literally stumbled onto the incredible story of Sphere. Out for a jog, he came across a pile of discarded circuit boards and case parts, which turned out to be most of an original 1975 Sphere computer. An engineer by training, he set out to bring the sidewalk machine to life. His research also revealed that Sphere—and its founder and community—had fallen out of a historical record that needed correcting. Go Computer Now! is the result.
Earlier in Zotto's career, he devised the font rendering system for Microsoft's Xbox 360 entertainment console and created Penultimate, a bestselling handwriting app acquired by Evernote. More recently, he designed a widely-used typeface, Fog City Gothic, based on San Francisco's historical street signage, and authored a documented retrospective of the work of Bob Buckter, the colorist most responsible for the legendary aesthetics of the city's historic homes. He lives in San Francisco.
Press and Media
- Advent of Computing — podcast conversation with Sean Haas about the research process for Go Computer Now! and the rediscovery of Sphere Corporation (November 2025). Listen →
Full press kit
For journalists who prefer a downloadable version: Download the press kit (PDF).
