Have you used a personal computer (PC), either at home or in your school? Designed for use by individuals, PCs first made their way in the mid-1970s. They started as do-it-yourself kits and were then readily available as products. But none of these was able to achieve the goal of widespread usage. For that, we will have to turn our attention towards IBM 5150.
Before 1980, IBM were primarily makers of mini and mainframe computers. They weren’t sure if the microcomputer market, in which PCs fit in, would be a profitable venture, nor were they clear about the time it would take their company to bring out a product in that line.
Tight deadline
Bill Lowe, a lab director in IBM’s Boca Raton, Florida facility got the go-ahead from the company’s top executives with a claim that his group can develop a small, new computer within a year. He picked a group of 12 strategists and ironed out the blueprint for hardware, software, manufacturing and even sales. This basic draft remained the same throughout the product cycle – evidence for how well-conceived the whole plan was.
The development team broke all the traditional rules of the company as they were building their new machine from non-IBM components. With little time to develop and test all components, they instead opted to get functioning, pretested sub-assemblies, testing the final product once it had been put together.
This meant that they were in fact able to come up with their PC in less than 12 months, the originally proposed deadline, and faster than any other hardware product in IBM’s history at that time. Acting almost as if they were an independent business unit, they had approached outside vendors for most of the parts, and also for the operating system and application software.
Microsoft’s window of opportunity
As a result, the IBM 5150 used Intel’s 8088 computer processor. For the operating system, they were hoping to license CP/M from Digital Research Inc. (DRI). As DRI hesitated, they went to a small, little-known company called Microsoft (yes, you read that right), who provided an alternative operating system called PC-DOS, which was partly based upon CP/M.
On August 12, 1981, in a rented ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, IBM introduced its 5150 personal computer. With the base model priced at $1,565 (the high-end models were priced around $6,000), it could process text, graphics and even let you play a game. While the base model included a system unit, keyboard and graphics capability, additional features including printer, extra memory and game adapter could be added on.
IBM looked for new channels to distribute these machines as well and picked ComputerLand and Sears, Roebuck and Co. to handle the sales along with IBM Product Centers. The IBM 5150 turned out to be a massive hit, with nearly 65,000 PCs sold in the first four months and the number of orders racing past 1,00,000 by Christmas that year.
Assembling works wonders
The IBM 5150 dominated for some time, before other players started catching up. The PC industry was never the same again as the strategy of relying on other companies to build parts of the whole fast-tracked its growth.
With the tectonic shift towards smartphones, PCs are no longer the giants in their business. We are still far from completely doing away with these machines, but most of the growth in the technology now stems from mobile devices. They are here to stay in the near-future, but PCs might well eventually become passe.
