1980 July - PC Proposal
- William C. Lowe, manager in "entry-level systems", Boca Raton, FL
- Enter the PC business
- Use outsourcing (rather than 3 yr in-house cycle)
- Use regular retail channels (in addition to IBM sales offices)

Within two weeks...
- GO for prototype
- Plan for market in 12 months

Hardware components
- Intel 8088 (16 bit processor, advantage of late entry)
- Tandon floppy drives
- Zenith power supplies
- Epson printers

OS Software
-  Gary Kildall at Digital Research is first choice, but blows it
- ? refuses to sign nondisclosure agreement
- ? more interested flying airplanes than talking to IBM
- ? 16 bit CP/M not far enough along to meet IBM's time requirements

- Second choice, Microsoft (1, 254-255)
- IBM visits Gates (age 29) and Allen in Seattle in July 1980
- Gates and Allen eager to accommodate
- Even wear suits and ties
- IBM Pres. John Opel and Mary Gates (mother of Bill) are board members of United Way (1, 255)
- And MS DOS is selected

1980 Fall
- Acorn: prototype Personal PC complete
- IBM management OK's production
- Don Estridge (age 42) in charge

These notes are taken primarily from (1) and (2). Need specific citations.

Software
- VisiCalc
- Word processor
- A suite of business programs
- Adventure (!)

Sales Outlets
- Sears and Roebuck
- ComputerLand
- IBM Sales Offices

1981 early on
- Ad campaign developed
- "IBM Personal PC" chosen as name
- IBM brand legitimizes it as a business machine
- A Charlie Chaplin ad campaign softens it for personal users

1981 summer
- First machines off the Boca Raton assembly line
- Aug, 1700 machines to Sear and ComputerLand
- Fully equipped, 64K RAM, floppy, $2,880

1981 Aug 12  - press launching in New York
- IBM has a smash hit!
- Production can't keep up with orders
- IBM estimated 250,000 total sales
- Sometimes sold almost that many in one month

1983 Jan 3 - Time Magazine's "Machine of the Year" (3)

1984 Industry "Rankings" (2, 272)
1. IBM (without PC Division?)
2. DEC
3. IBM PC Division

And the IBM PC Clones come....

Notes

1. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. Computer: A History of the Information Machine (Basic Books, 1996).

2. Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

3. Otto Friedrich, "Machine of the Year, The Computer Move In," Time (1983 Jan 3). Also available online at http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Time.MOTY.1982.html (Computer Science Department, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, accessed 2004 Nov 26).

Bibliography

"Welcome to the Obsolete Technology Website," http://oldcomputers.net/index.html (oldcomputers.net, accessed 2004 Nov 26). These pages have a timeline from 1971-1989 and information on several dozen personal computers from that period.