30 Years: The Top Five Milestones of The IBM PC
The IBM PC is celebrating its 30th birthday today.
Over those three decades, the device that was once believed to have little to no consumer appeal has changed our life dramatically to a degree where most of us would be literally lost without being able to use a computing device on every single day. In 30 years, the original idea of the PC has evolved significantly. If you had to choose five milestones, which ones would you think of?
The original IBM PC was the IBM 5150 and we refer to it as the original PC as we can trace the roots of today's computers back to this system, especially since it used PC DOS 1.0, a modified version of MS-DOS 1.0, which was the foundation from the huge success that Microsoft represents today. If we were to look at pure computer, the IBM PC was hardly the first, of course.
Apple sold its first computer in 1976 and then there was the famous Osborne Computer in 1979. The first idea of x86 can be traced back to a napkin drawing by Austin Roche in 1968; and Intel's 4004 CPU, the first single-chip processor, came to market almost 40 years ago in November of 1971. Konrad Zuse is credited with inventing the modern, programmable computer in 1936; and if you were to go back in history, you would find the Antikythera system that is believed to have been created in 87 BC; and of course, there is the Abacus, whose origins are in 2400 BC.
The 5150 was announced on August 12, 1981 and was sold for nearly six years until April 2, 1987. It had a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor. The base system sold for $1565 and included 5.25-inch, 160 KB floppy drives, 16 KB memory, a built-in speaker as well as a 10 MB hard drive. The IBM PC turned the computer into massive success that eventually topped 10 million unit sales overall by 1983. Mentioning each significant milestone from 1981 to 2011 would be enough for an entire book, but I'll invite you to share your thoughts on critical and the most important trends and inventions since then. Here are my five choices.
1. The Notebook PC
Mobile computing has been outrageously expensive until the mid-2000s - I can still remember pitching a review of $2500 budget notebooks back in 1996 and I was told no one would care for such junk. The average notebook we reviewed back then had price tags of well over $5000.
Portable PCs have been around for a while. The PC-compatible models were the Compaq Portable in 1982 and the IBM Portable PC 5155 in 1984. However, if we look at a form factor that is much more related to the notebooks as we know them today - and include a foldable display, we would have to choose the IBM Convertible 5140 PC from 1986 as the first notebook PC.
It weighed 12 pounds, had an Intel 8088 4.77 MHz processor, 256 KB memory, two 3.5-inch floppy drives, a display with a resolution of 80x25 for text and 640x200 pixels for graphics. Pricing started at $1995.
2. The First Virus
How could I not mention the virus as the origin of all security concerns, data theft and countless wasted hours trying to desperately restore data that has been lost, or at least was at risk? The first concept virus can be traced back to a paper published by Veith Risak in 1972, which described "self-reproducing automata with minimal information exchange, which referred to the first fully functional virus written that targeted, back then, a Siemens 4004/35 system. The first virus in the wild was Elk Cloner and was written in 1981 to attack Apple's DOS 3.3 OS. The term virus was coined in 1984 by Fred Cohen. However, the first PC virus did not surface in the wild until 1986: (c)Brain is officially being credited with the honors of being the first annoying virus, even if it was created to deter software piracy. Among the most famous virus we remember today are the Iloveyou virus in 2000, which infected millions of computers in a matter of hours, Code Red in 2001, which caused denial of service attacks, as well as Sasser in 2004, which resulted in system constant crashes and restarts.
3. Windows
Windows has commoditized the computer. As much as we complain about the fact that Microsoft has stolen Apple's (or Atari's) idea of an easy-to-use GUI, it was Microsoft that succeeded in making the kind of software that was necessary to take the PC mainstream. Windows was launched in November 1985 and Microsoft still controls the OS market today - with a market share of nearly 90 percent.
Microsoft's success did not arrive until the release of Windows 3.1 in 1992, when Microsoft's fortunes began to rise at an exponential rate. Windows 95 followed in August 1995 and prompted people around the world to wait in line at midnight to get their hands on of the first copies. Today's Windows hasn't quite such an emotional following anymore, but we know that Windows 7 is at a rate of 20 million licenses per month and remains the core business of Microsoft. Windows 8, due in 2012, is likely to become a major Windows release that will take us much closer to cloud computing services.
4. The Web Browser
While the WWW has just turned 20 years old, if we consider Tim Berners-Lee's post to a newsgroup and the idea for a hypertext-based network as the birthday of the WWW and the mainstream Internet, it was the general web browser that enabled users to actually browse Internet content. Mosaic was the first web browser and was invented by Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina at NCSA. The first version was released in January of 1993 and remained available until 1997 for Windows systems.
Mosaic was licensed by Spyglass, which licensed the browser, for example, to Compuserve and later to Microsoft, which renamed it to Internet Explorer - and used the original NCSA code in versions 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. A PC without connection to the Internet and without a web browser would be rather useless today - and a web browser is one of the key features we expect to come with a PC. It was most likely the most significant addition to the PC besides the operating system in its history.
5. Wireless Technology
This last choice was a tough one. I ended up choosing wireless features over 3D graphics and especially the 3dfx Voodoo2 3D chip and the Nvidia GeForce 256 GPU due to our dependency on wireless connectivity today. When we talk to basic wireless connectivity today, we most likely refer to 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, which was first commercially used in 1999, but did not become generally available until 2001, when, for example, Intel sold an extremely expensive Wi-Fi 802.11b kit with a base router and two cards for $1200. It was especially Intel that aggressively pushed Wi-Fi, later on as part of its integrated Centrino platform and helped create an entire industry that turned the technology into a standard feature on any PC (and other computing devices).
Of course, wireless is evolving and is including other components such as 3G, 4G and WiMax. Most computers sold today do not come without wireless capabilities as there would be no Internet access. When was the last time you have seen someone connecting a notebook to a telephone line or even using an Ethernet cable to a broadband connection?
There you go - these are my five choices. What would you choose?
- IBM,
- Microsoft,
- Business,
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Well I wouldn't choose web browsing per se, but the actual development of the web itself. You could already do something akin to web browsing during the era of the BBS, but it required a direct dial-in connection to each individual BBS. The development of the web made everything openly available.
I'm glad to see PC is greatly evolving in power efficiency area. Today it has more advanced (and aggressive) speed & power management of CPU and GPU, there are technologies like Virtu, Fusion with potent GPU on die, also motherboards with efficient components are becoming the norm (even cheaper ones), CPUs have memory controller embedded (instead on a chipset), increasing popularity of SSD (low power operation & fast speed does more in less time and energy) etc.
How about the NV1 chip? A commercial failure that nearly broke nVidia during their infancy, but it heralded an entire industry. I had one of those: A Diamond Edge 3D card with a completely proprietary framework, and it shipped with the only three games that ever made to take advantage of the chip.
Or the AdLib sound synthesizer? The first MIDI card for a PC. We went from beeps and bloops to real music!
No dispute the development of the browser is a milestone.
Not mentioning Netscape Communications and the Navigator Suite, however, should be considered blasphemous.
Umm, me. Today!
BTW, the first PC did not have a hard drive. Just one or two floppies. It was the PC-XT that introduced the first 10MB Hard drive in 1983.
Plug & Play.
Thank god.
I don't miss setting and resetting IRQs, DMA channels, or any of that other stuff. Especially doing it with jumpers. Then you had to configure the software to match.
the base ibm pc system did not include a 10mb hd
Lol, every day. Not the telephone line - they stopped adding these sockets to laptops about 4 years ago - but the Ethernet cable? All the time. Can't beat its stability. Besides, in my home country, my ISP provides the access via the Ethernet cable... best thing ever: plug it in the PC itself, or into the router...
While I agree WiFi is great, the web would be boring without all the bells and whistles 3D graphics brought along with it. Flash, YouTube, Farmville and other stupid Facebook games are half the reason why people go online....
Another butchered, misinformed article.
In fact, the original PC did not sell with a hard disk. The PC XT did, and that was originally a 5 mb one.
For $1565, you did NOT get a 5.25 inch floppy disk, either. That was for a base unit, period. No floppy, certainly no hard disk. I don't if any even sold this way, since demand was so strong there was little incentive for IBM to make these models. But, it was intended to be used with a cassette player in these configurations, which is why it came with "Cassette BASIC".
Microsoft Windows made the PC mainstream? What???? Why talk about stuff you don't know anything about? DOS was wildly successful, and Intel based PCs were increasing sales every year. What a stupid, uninformed remark. By the way, Wolfie, do you know why Windows gained market acceptance? Because Windows/386 could take advantage of Intel's Virtual 86 mode, and thus could multi-task (albeit cooperatively) DOS programs! People started using it for that, it gained a good installed base, and Windows based apps started coming out.
PCs kept gaining popularity because they were becoming more powerful and less expensive. When you were obviously still a child,since you know nothing of this period, the old saying was "the computer you really want will always cost $5000". Every year sales increased, there wasn't a Windows event that suddenly made the PC popular. What stupidity.
Please, if you don't know what the Hell you're talking about, say nothing instead of spreading misinformation so you sound like you're smart. Someone is going to catch your stupidity.
Among other things, you missed a certain punch-card technology used in looms that could be "programmed" when you were going over the history of computers, and i think The Millennium Bug was also quite significant...isn't Tri-Gate significant?
Hehe...the pricing seems so funny, if you compare them then and now...i remember our first Pentium II system in 1998 cost some £2000...
Windows 95 was mind blowing at the time. When I saw the pics in PC Gaming magazine of Doom running in windows I couldn't believe it.
I'd Have to add the inclusion of the mouse.It's the device that truly changed how we interact with the computer.
My first computer was an IBM PC jr. It came with a floppy disk drive, but the instruction book clearly stated this was an option. The computer had BASIC burned into its ROM chip. It had two cartridge slots. Changing cartridges did not require turning the computer off. This was also the first computer in existence to have a wireless keyboard. Unlike its big brother, the PC jr's PC speaker could actually do more than play simple beeps. The IBM PC jr was the best consumer desktop PC available at the time of its release. Why it didn't last longer is a total mystery.
How about the mouse?
I think right now we're in the middle of the touchscreen revolution. That's a huge one that's still a bit too new to really be seen as massive.
"" Optical "" mouse
Usb
Lcd display (not a desk apart just for the monitor)
Sata conector (no more ide cables)
Graphics user interface in general
IBM is really a Dinosaur and it suck a lot.
They even not able to sell computer today and give their division to China.
It's what happen when they have too much "Chief"/Boss all thinking they have the solution.
So the company go nowhere.
It would be interested to see IBM (Microsoft, Apple, etc. all dinosaur and suck companies) in future.
LOL! The sentence structure and errors are SO funny! Dinosaur and suck companies.. just... GREAT!
Though, if both Apple and MS suck, which OS do you use?
Here is my top 5 milestones since the IBM PC model 5150.
1. Hard Drive -since the introduction of the IBM XT in 1983.
Without a hard drive or now even a SSD a PC would be fairly useless
although the IBM PC could run it's PC DOS off of a floppy drive.
I had a IBM PC 5150 with 2 floppy drives.
2. Optical Drive -it would be extremely difficult to install modern OS's
or applications without one although flash drives can be used too and software can now be downloaded off the Internet.Became common in the early-mid 1990's.
3. Sound card or chip without sound we would lack multimedia.
Imagine having no sound that would suck.
4. GUI Operating System (Windows or Linux) with mouse.It's what we use today rather than the awkward old Command Line Interfaces.
5. Internet including Browser,Ethernet,Wireless etc.
the biggest milestone was actually beating out Atari and Amiga, who IMO had much more compelling, more powerful products at the time, especially for audio/visual use.
I would list MS-Windows as one of the worst things that could happen to Personal Computer, it more or less killed the development of OS, much of the OS:es we see today are at the same level as those we had in the late 80's, really nothing new when it comes to features or how to use your computer, just add some eye candy those old OS:es and you will be able to do the same things as with MS-Windows-7 or OSX.
The only thing that we can credit Microsoft for innovation is the red line below misspelled words in a word processor, the rest is just ripoffs from other OS:es or other applications.
Wolfgang Gruener is wrong
I worked for Wang for many years and the WANG PCS-II was a standalone PC with dual 5 and a 1\4 floppies running Basic and it was released in 1977.
It was small enough that one person could lift it easily.
http://www.gaby.de/ewang.htm
How about the NV1 chip? A commercial failure that nearly broke nVidia during their infancy, but it heralded an entire industry. I had one of those: A Diamond Edge 3D card with a completely proprietary framework, and it shipped with the only three games that ever made to take advantage of the chip.Or the AdLib sound synthesizer? The first MIDI card for a PC. We went from beeps and bloops to real music!
The nv1 was nothing but a tiny blip on the radar at that time and the market didn't really take off till the 3dfx voodoo1.
My first computer was an IBM PC jr. It came with a floppy disk drive, but the instruction book clearly stated this was an option. The computer had BASIC burned into its ROM chip. It had two cartridge slots. Changing cartridges did not require turning the computer off. This was also the first computer in existence to have a wireless keyboard. Unlike its big brother, the PC jr's PC speaker could actually do more than play simple beeps. The IBM PC jr was the best consumer desktop PC available at the time of its release. Why it didn't last longer is a total mystery.
Actually, the PC jr. did survive a long, long time, even longer than the PC. It was just called the Tandy 1000. Tandy actually based that on the junior, with the superior graphics and sound, not on the PC. Just as they were about to release it, IBM discontinued the PC jr. and they had to respin it as largely compatible with the PC jr.
The Junior had a lot of good stuff, like doubling graphics memory, and finally introducing decent sound. The problems were there horrible keyboard, which they finally replaced, but too late. Also, it wasn't quite 100% compatible with the PC, and was slower (no DMA), and of course couldn't use IBM PC cards (they had to be daisy chained on the side to each other).
The real problem was the price was still too high. People could get Tandys, Commodores or Ataris (Apples were over price junk) for a lot less. So, it didn't have what it took to be a business computer, for reasons mentioned above, but was priced much higher than competition for the home. That's why it didn't sell, even though the technology was good and survived in other computers for many years.
the 1st milestone of the IBM PC was when IBM released its specs to the public for cloning. the 2nd milestone was IBM did not pursue legal actions on anyone cloning and allowed others to innovate on its original design and concept. the 3rd and last milestone was IBM just let its baby fade into obscurity while others with more imaginative and innovative ideas take over.
My first machine was Radio Shack/ Tandy TRS80
No floppy or hard drive, just a tape deck, the floppy for the tandy was $1500 first har drive was a winchester 10 MB cost us $30,000 but used with an Altos computer running CPM/MPM what a fantastic system that was.
Glad prices went down though
Umm, me. Today!
ditto
One bit of technology that is often taken for granted and overlooked is the flat-panel screen. It is what really makes every mobile computing device possible. I remember when Compaq was first formed by a group of former IBM execs. They chose Compaq as a name, because they focused on a hinged "folding" computer design, but flat panels were no where in sight. It had a small CRT monitor built in was was the size of a small suitcase.
owww this brings memories!
The IBM PC you have at this photo there is the same pc i bought at 1987! For..about 1500euro, current money, but back then it was like 9 monthly salaries of a good salesman in Greece!
That PC had 8088 CPU @4.77MHZ! and 256KB RAM!, Especially the cpu speed has gone 1000times more about in our days! insane! I bought that pc, 13year old, and me with my brother mother and father made contests at DIGGER lol.
Yes ok my father used it for his stock merchandise too but..oh well..it was our GAMING PC hahaha.
Really sad you ADDED wireless Technology than VOODOO cards!I feel you are stealing their history along NVIDIA who bought 3DFX and shut them down