Guess what today is!
IBM/PC Day!
On August 12, 1981, IBM introduced their first personal computer, the IBM module 5150.
It jumped IBM up greatly in the computer industry, and set the standard for Personal Computr designs. Before long āIBM compatibleā became an important thing when it came to computers.
To see the impact the module 5150 had on the computer world, let us do a little comparison.
In the early 1960s a single IBM computer required at least 1/2 an acre of airconditioned space, and about 60 people to operate it.
By 1980 IBM had release the module 5120, a great computer at the time, costing between about 9,500$ and 23,000$. It had a great nine inch screen, and 32K ram, and two, not one but two, 1.2 MegaByte floppy drives.
The module 5150 added much greater technology, its CGA graphics card, when paired with a good enough driver was capable of displaying through VGAi to much larger monitors.
It contained up to a 64 kB ram, and with the expansion chassi, it could power and use two hard drives. The expansion was shipped with a 10 MB hard drive, greatly improving its storage space.
Boy have we come a long way. And all thanks to the pioneers of the technology we have come to rely on today . I sit and look at my laptop, with a 180 GigaByte hard drive, and a 14 inch screen, and I pause in amazement looking at how far we have advanced since then.
Only sixty years ago, a computer took up more space than most people owned, and cost more money than nearly all of us can afford today.
I can only wonder what will have another 60 years from now.