Happy Birthday, PC!

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 06:46:00 GMT

Today is the 25th birthday of the Personal computer. Happy Birthday, PC.

Hmmm....1981. I was finishing high school. I did not have a computer. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the top grossing film, Mommy Dearest debuts. Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap, Freeze Frame, I Love a Rainy Night, Celebration, and Private Eyes are released (I know these will be lilting through your head for the rest of the day).

The first Space Shuttle launches. Ted Codd is the Turning Award Recipient. Pierre Trudeau is Canadian PM. Terry Fox passes away, but his Marathon of Hope goes on. Ronald Reagan is President and the Iran hostages are released minutes after he takes office.

MTV launches.

The original Model 5150 IBM PC with a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor was released in the United States at a base price of $1,565. (from Wikipedia.com)

I don't have a picture of the first PC handy , but I do have these pics from a recent visit to the Smithsonian, of other early devices.

That would be a TRS-80 I believe, on the right. I remember a friend of mine had one at home. I remember writing programs on it to track how many cases of oranges we had sold for a fundraiser.

Here's an Apple, for those of you who like simplicity...:) And to think all those guys putting tiny motherboards into cigar boxes over at Fry's are way behind the times compared to this wooden work of art.

These days I stop by my local thrift shop from time to time to see what older computers they have. I've picked up a Commodore, but most of the other stuff is just...stuff. One night when I was out running, I found an old beat up Lisa out in someone's trash. It's too beat up to work, but somehow I couldn't just let it go to the dump. Lisa was the first GUI computer. She even had project management software.

Now I have more power in my Pocket PC than we ever dreamed about on our desktops. I still remember the excitement regarding the pace of change in computing. Now days, that awe is focused on other gadgets, technologies and trends -- but that doesn't take way from where we were in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Everybody Wang Chung...and Happy Birthday

Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture

Happy Birthday, PC!

Today is the 25th birthday of the Personal computer. Happy Birthday, PC.