There's been a big hullabaloo in the past week marking the 20th anniversary of the personal computer. As many people know, it isn't.
The PC had been around well before that, with hobbyists cobbling together their own "little" computers from kits, such as the MITS Altair 8800 in the mid-1970s.
The Apple II, from Apple Computer Inc, a preassembled PC with a color monitor, sound and graphics, hit the market in 1977. And Tandy Radio Shack's TRS-80, affectionately known as the Trash 80, also came out around the same time.
But certainly International Business Machines Corp, Intel Corp, the world's biggest chipmaker and manufacturer of microprocessors, and Microsoft Corp, the largest software company and dominant purveyor of operating system software with Windows, deserve a good amount of credit.
They deserve it for introducing the third wave of computing, at the time, to the business world.
Huge mainframe computers in the 1960s gave way to minicomputers in the 1970s and IBM's PC helped to ignite the personal computer revolution on a mass-production scale for use in business with its introduction of the PC on Aug. 12, 1981.
"None of us had any idea," said Earl Whetstone, the field sales engineer for Intel who sold IBM its 8088 microprocessor that powered IBM's first PC.
"If you look at the volume, they gave us a range of a minimum of 50,000 processors in the first year and a maximum of 200,000 and a target of 100,000. They sold 130,000 PCs in the first year," he said.
Last year, makers sold 140 million PCs and the industry has ballooned to a US$178 billion business.
IBM saw the potential of these small machines in the then nascent industry and, in the summer of 1980, the world's biggest maker of computers dispatched 12 top engineers, later dubbed "the dirty dozen," to Boca Raton, Florida. The top-secret project was known as Project Chess.
Because IBM wanted to develop the PC as quickly as possible, it didn't have time to develop its own microprocessor internally. That's where Intel comes in, even though at the time the company was principally a memory chipmaker.
"But early in 1978 we got a phone call and they wanted me to bring all the information on our microprocessors," Whetstone said.
IBM ultimately went with Intel, and, because Big Blue had decided to make its PC with off-the-shelf components, there wasn't much of anything to prevent upstarts such as Compaq Computer Corp from making their own IBM clones. Thus one half of the Wintel duopoly was born with that deal.
The other, Microsoft, was born when IBM settled on the then tiny software company -- founded in 1975 -- to provide the operating system. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Paul Allen had found an operating system written for an early Intel chip, which it bought and it ultimately became MS-DOS.
MS-DOS later gave way to Windows, which emulated Apple's popular and intuitive graphical user interface, or GUI.
Developments came quickly after that. By the mid-1980s Intel had left the memory chip market, which it invented, for the far more profitable pastures of microprocessors.
In 1985, Intel rolled out its 386 chip that allowed multi-tasking and, in the same year, Microsoft's first Windows operating system was launched. Often accused of creating vaporware, software that didn't exist, Microsoft had announced Windows in 1983.
Ultimately, hundreds of companies in Silicon Valley had personal computers, before the industry started consolidating and was winnowed into the smaller number of major players that now exist, such as Dell Computer Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Gateway Inc and IBM, which is now the No. 3 PC maker.
While Intel and Microsoft were to honor IBM's PC at an event in Silicon Valley on Wednesday night to celebrate what they call the 20th anniversary of the personal computer, the very idea for such a device traces its roots back even farther than the Altair, the TRS-80, or other, earlier PCs.
In 1968, Douglas Engelbart, a high-tech pioneer and researcher at what was then the Stanford Research Institute, had some prescient words before demonstrating a few of the ideas he had for such a device.
"If in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could you derive from that," Engelbart asked.
He then went on to demonstrate real-time text editing, the computer mouse, hyper-linking and online collaboration.
PC industry developments
1971 -- Intel Corp produces its first microprocessor, the 4004.
1974 -- Intel produces the 8080 microchip, which was the brains of the Altair, a computer allegedly named after a star system in a Star Trek episode, which became a hit with hobbyists who built the personal computer from a US$400 kit.
1975 -- Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft and develop a BASIC program for the Altair.
1975 -- IBM 22.7kg 5100 Portable Computer announced at prices starting at US$8,975.
1976 -- Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs introduce the Apple I, bolted together in a wooden case with a sloped front and sell them for US$666.66.
1977 -- Apple Computer released the Apple II, featuring color graphics and using audio cassettes for storage.
1981 -- IBM launches its PC, running on an Intel 8088 processor. The 5150 was the predecessor of the modern PC and ran on the Microsoft Disk Operating System (MS-DOS).
1985 -- Intel's 386 chip allows multitasking. Microsoft's first Windows operating system is luanched. Microsoft, often accused of creating `vaporware' that does not exist, had announced Windows in 1983.
1986 -- Microsoft Corp goes public at US$21 per share.
1990 -- Microsoft launches Windows 3.0
1993 -- Intel introduces the Pentium processor
1994 -- Yahoo, a search engine, is launched, as is Netscape, whose commercial graphical browser allowed customers to surf the net graphically.
1995 -- Windows 95 is launched and sells more than 1 million copies in four days. Also, Microsoft sets forth plans to build Internet features into all of its products.
1997 -- World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov beaten by IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer
2000 -- Intel introduces the Pentium 4, with 42 million transistors and running at 1.5GHz, or 1.5 billion cycles per second, compared to the 108KHz, or 108,000 cycle per second speed of Intel's first chip introduced in 1971.
SOURCES: woz.org, ibm.com, microsoft.com, intel.com and dg.com
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique