In 1971, Intel put a computer’s logic on a single chip. Nobody who ran an established computer company wanted to do anything with it.
The Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum in Germany notes that a “microcomputer” could have been mass-produced from that year, but manufacturers such as IBM and Nixdorf Computer saw no sense in building a machine for personal use. The idea fell to hobbyists.
From 4004 to 8080
The chip was the Intel 4004, introduced in November 1971. It was a 4-bit part that replaced six earlier chips, and it had been made for a calculator. Intel followed it with the 8008 in April 1972, the first 8-bit microprocessor, and then the 8080 in 1974. The Asianometry newsletter describes the 8080 as the first Intel design built from the ground up as a microprocessor. Designers took it up quickly.
The kit that started it
The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics put the Altair 8800 on its cover, and the magazine sold it as a kit for 397 dollars. Ed Roberts had designed and built it. Orders arrived by the thousand within weeks, enough to pull its maker, MITS, back from bankruptcy, according to a PBS timeline of the era. The buyers were tinkerers who either modified the machine or stripped it down to build something new.
Two of them mattered a great deal. Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, and Microsoft was born. Garage start-ups followed, Apple among them with its Apple I.
A broader public
By 1977 the machines had keyboards, monitors and software, and they were aimed at more than technology enthusiasts. Commodore’s PET2001, Radio Shack’s TRS-80 and the Apple II all arrived that year. The Apple II sold for $1,195 with 16K of RAM, though without a monitor. The museum says these three set the first “PC standard”.
Software gave buyers a reason to want one. VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, was released in October 1979 and was an instant success. Monthly shipments climbed from 500 copies to 12,000 between 1979 and 1981. By 1980, the PBS timeline says, Apple held 50% of the personal computer market.
IBM arrives
In 1980 IBM approached Microsoft to write BASIC for its own personal computer project. The IBM PC went on sale in August 1981. It was model 5150, and the Heinz Nixdorf museum is blunt about it: the machine had no technical innovations. Built around the IBM PC design and Microsoft’s DOS operating system, it still became the standard quickly.
The Apple Macintosh followed in 1984, with a graphical interface, an 8-MHz, 32-bit Motorola 68000 processor and a built-in 9-inch black-and-white screen.
Sources
- Intel & AMD: The First 30 Years – by Jon Y
- Explore Intel’s history- Inside One of the First PCs: The Altair 8800
- The birth of the PC – From the garage to the big, wide world – HNF (Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum)
- Triumph of the Nerds: A History of the Computer – Micro (PBS timeline)
