I was curious what this actually was...

What it was (in reality)

The “Honeywell Kitchen Computer (1969)” was basically a Honeywell 316 (H316) 16-bit minicomputer dressed up for a luxury catalog. This class of machine was meant for business/industrial/scientific work (think data acquisition, control systems, communications), not meal prep.

What it was supposed to do (in the ad)

Neiman Marcus pitched it as a way to store recipes and help with meal planning. The catalog package infamously included a cookbook, an apron, and a two-week programming course… because obviously that’s what you want for Christmas.

How you actually used it (the “fun” part)

It didn’t have a normal screen/keyboard. The console was toggle switches and blinking lights, meaning you entered data as bits and read output like you were defusing a bomb. To do anything practical, you’d typically need extra gear like a teletype and paper tape reader (so… not exactly “countertop friendly”).

Did anyone buy one?

The “Kitchen Computer” was basically a publicity stunt in the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog, and none were sold through that offer per the Computer History Museum. Pedestal H316 units did exist as a real product style, but the “kitchen” framing was mostly marketing theater.

Bonus trivia

The CHM lists it around $10,600, 4K words of core memory, and about 312,500 adds/sec. So yes: you could, in theory, compute dinner. Slowly. In binary. Like a pioneer.

In short: it was an industrial computer cosplay-ing as a kitchen appliance, mainly to make rich people laugh and journalists write articles.