IBM Personal Computer Released
In August 1981, IBM released the IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, a modest desktop machine that would reshape the computer industry. It was not the first personal computer, but it came from the company most associated with business computing, and its arrival signaled to corporations that small computers were serious tools. Its design also became a de facto standard, and descendants of that architecture still underlie most of the world's desktop and laptop computers.
By the late 1970s, hobbyists and small firms had already created a market for microcomputers. Machines such as the Altair 8800, the Apple II, and the Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80 were selling in growing numbers, and programs like the spreadsheet VisiCalc gave businesses practical reasons to buy them. IBM, dominant in mainframes, saw the trend as both an opportunity and a threat. To move quickly, a small team based in Boca Raton, Florida, was given unusual freedom to depart from the company's slow, vertically integrated habits.
The team built the machine largely from off-the-shelf parts, including an Intel 8088 processor, and used an open architecture with expansion slots that outside companies could design products for. IBM also looked outside for software. Microsoft supplied the operating system, sold by IBM as PC DOS, after acquiring the basis of it from another firm; Microsoft retained the right to license its version, MS-DOS, to others. The base model was sold with modest memory and offered with options such as a monochrome display and floppy disk drives. IBM's name, its sales force, and its reputation for reliability helped the machine succeed quickly.
The consequences were large and partly unintended. Because the PC used standard components and a documented design, other manufacturers could copy it. Companies such as Compaq reverse-engineered the machine's basic firmware legally in the early 1980s and sold "IBM-compatible" computers, and many others followed. Software developers could write for one dominant platform, which encouraged more buyers, which in turn encouraged more software. IBM's share of the market it had created eventually declined, while Microsoft and Intel, which supplied key components, gained lasting influence.
The IBM PC helped move computers from hobbyist shops and corporate data centers onto ordinary desks in offices, schools, and homes. Word processing, spreadsheets, and later networking and the internet became routine parts of work and daily life on machines descended from that standard. Historians often debate how much credit belongs to IBM's design decisions versus the market forces already in motion, but there is little doubt that 1981 marked a turning point in making personal computing a mass, standardized technology.