IBM's silent revolution

IBM may no longer make personal computers but 25 years ago -- on August 12, 1981 -- it triggered a silent unplanned revolution when it announced the smallest lowest-priced computer system (IBM Personal Computer-5150), pricing it at $1,565.

An analyst was quoted as saying that 'IBM bringing out a personal computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap-dance.'

It had an enhanced version of the Microsoft BASIC programming language (we have XP today and Vista to follow); an 83-key adjustable keyboard (we may laugh at it today); and 16 KB (512 MB and 1 GB are household memory names today) memory.

This was the just the basic system for home use. It did not include a monitor, video card, parallel or serial port, operating system, or floppy drive. If you wanted a 64 KB (remember Bill Gates saying this was enough?) one, including a single diskette drive (where are they today?) and display (those monitors with a greenish tinge), it would cost a little over $3000.

An expanded system for business with colour graphics, two diskette drives, and a printer would cost about $4,500. Today, for these amounts (the value of money has changed over the years), you can buy a dozen computers with hyper-threading capabilities (HT technology) that are a hundred times faster, and store gigabytes of data and video (computers did not even have a hard drive in those days.

Read the revolution