In August 1981, the IBM Personal Computer first appeared. It was not the first of its [..1..] - Apple computers had been around longer.
But the IBM computer was revolutionary for a [..2..] reason - it used open standards. This meant that not only IBM, but anyone else who was interested could design hardware and write software for the system.
And very many people did. IBM had [..3..] a monster that came close to destroying it.
Soon everyone was buying PCs and as the new computers grew in power they began to replace the computers sold by IBM itself. It would be many years before the company learned to [..4..] to the changed world it had done so much to create.
[..5..] of the new software companies was a small software company in Washington State called Microsoft.
IBM had planned to use a system called CP/M for the operating system of their new computer. However, the owners of CP/M were not interested [..6..] working with IBM so IBM turned to Microsoft.
Microsoft did not have an operating system, but a local hardware manufacturer sold them a [..7..] called QDOS (which legend says stood for 'Quick and Dirty Operating system').
Re-named MS-DOS, the new system was a great success, and Microsoft allowed other manufacturers as well as IBM to use it. [..8..] Microsoft was independent of IBM and on its way to becoming the wealthiest company in the world.
Its hard to believe that its been two decades since the [..9..] of the first PC, and even harder to believe how much things have advanced since then.
Twenty years ago, the typical PC had a monochrome [..10..], modest floppy-disk drive and only 64,000 bytes of memory; today, the average PC is a desktop supercomputer.
Back in the early 1980s, even the idea of a 'personal computer' was a novelty. [..11..] many people, computers were just too intimidating - they were difficult to set up and maintain, and most of the programs they ran were slow and hard to use.
Few people saw a computer as an essential part of their [..12..] life. - Bill Gates in 2001.
For computers to be [..13..] they needed to run a program that would make everyone want one.
This 'killer application' turned out [..14..] a spreadsheet called Lotus 1-2-3. Until Lotus produced their spreadsheet for the PC, doing such calculations was slow and difficult.
With a PC running MS-DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 it was [..15..] and effortless. Suddenly every business in the developed world needed a PC.
