The IBM 5150 personal computer, unveiled to the world on August 12, 1981, set a standard that resulted in the machines taking root in every facet of home and professional living.
"We had no clue it would be developed into what it developed into," said Mark Dean, a member of the IBM 5150 project team, which rejoiced in code names including "The End of the World Gang."
"We developed this as a productivity tool mostly for business," Dean said.
The bulky machine had a base price of $1,565 - more than $4,000 in today's prices - and boasted a measly 64 kilobytes of memory that could be upgraded.
"It was heavy enough to break a foot," said Chris Garcia, assistant curator of the Computer History Museum near Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. "I proved that in 1989 or '90."
Garcia said that while US firms Apple Computer, Commodore Business Machines and Tandy, plus France's Micral, had released their own machines in the 1970s, the digital revolution sprang from the 5150 platform.
Dean said that he and colleagues on the project at an IBM lab in Florida expected perhaps 2,000 of the machines would sell. The figure quickly climbed into the millions, he recalled.
"There was pretty much no possibility of failure, even though they may not have seen it that way," Garcia said. "They had the IBM name in business, which meant a lot at that time, and the DOS [Disk Operated System] which allowed for the development of software that really took off and made the machine go beyond the stars."
A fledgling company named Microsoft bought the rights to the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" for $50,000 and developed it into the cash cow Windows software used on approximately 90 percent of the world's computers.
In what might rank as the biggest business mistake of all time, IBM failed to secure exclusive rights to the DOS system touted by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, enabling the Harvard dropout to become the world's richest man.
"DOS was the grandfather of all the machines we have today, pretty much," Garcia said.
In a move that fueled the proliferation of PCs, IBM encouraged other firms to clone its machines.
"The clones were the ones that moved things forward," Dean said. "The fact that everyone who built a PC had to make it 100 percent compatible was pivotal."
US firm Compaq introduced a PC in 1983 and other companies followed. The ensuing competition drove down prices and people bought machines for their homes.
"Momentum at that point was so huge that what should have changed the world completely, the release of the Macintosh computer [in 1984], was unable to stop Microsoft, IBM and all the clone makers," Garcia said.
Microsoft's introduction of a Windows operating system that let people click on-screen icons instead of typing in commands locked in the PC's success, according to Garcia.
Apple's well-built Macintosh computers were the first to popularize the user-friendly use of icons. But Macs wound up being marginalized and became the machine of choice for artists, photographers and educators.
The Internet and advances that made computers lighter, smaller, and more versatile imbedded PCs in the fabric of modern life and resulted in the declaration of a "digital revolution."
"The workplace has changed more from 1981 to now than it had in the 100 years prior," Garcia said. "The American workplace today is basically defined by our computer use ... It has also given us more ways to slack off at work than anything else ever invented."
PCs shifted power and value to younger workers with technological savvy that veteran executives lacked, according to Garcia.
"The bad is that everywhere you go, you can work," Dean said. "There is no place to hide. We have to figure out how to balance our lives."
IBM itself is no longer in the PC manufacturing game, having sold the unit to Chinese giant Lenovo. It now concentrates on IT services and on high-end mainframe computers.
Dean expected the next major breakthrough to be in software and that hardware makers would soon come out with a spiral notebook-size PC children tote to school.
"There is still a lot to do," said Dean, who now works as a vice president at IBM Almaden Research center in San Jose, California.
"I would love to make it happen again. The challenge is being in the right place at the right time with the right idea."
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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