The Intel 8088 processor launched 44 years ago on June 1, 1979
I had just finished my freshman year at Michigan, having changed my major to Engineering half way through. From a compute standpoint, we used holes punched in card stock that fed into a Fortran machine to "type in" our code.
I few years later, I was working and we received the brand new PC's from Microsoft. The tech quickly moved from 5" floppy discs to 3" hard discs before the auto industry commercialized the hard drive. Used DOS access to start programs!
Just think that up until 150-ish years ago man was limited to the speed of his horse and the wind in his sails.
🤣
Nerd!
😄 Seriously though congrats on being early to the party. My first floppy disk experiences came with Commodore 64, Apple IIe, and early 8088s back before I knew how to tie my shoes.
We've certainly come a long way since then.
The backstory of the "PC" is really interesting... most people take it for granted, but it's a story of capitalism--some people who grabbed opportunity and some who didn't see it coming.
The PC was hardly the first microprocessor. The 70's had quite a few brands... just none from THE dominant computer company, IBM. Like, folks today don't realize how incredibly powerful IBM was in the 1970s. There were two technology companies running what we think of computer technology -- IBM and AT&T ("Ma Bell"--this was before the phone company divestiture in 1984). IBM sold "mainframes" (the room-size things) and "minicomputers" (not quite as large but still beasts). IBM sales people (including my father) were constantly bombarded by customers asking, "When will IBM have microcomputers?"
IBM was like, "Well we don't care about these stupid little computers, they can't do what our huge powerful computers can do, but there's a buck to be made here, and we like making bucks." So they threw together a box, put an OS on it, and stuck their name on it. For the processor, IBM got the best offer from some unimportant chip company (that would be--stop me if you have heard of them--Intel) and threw together a bunch of components from various vendors to assemble the first IBM PC (the PS-1, IIRC). IBM thought so little of the box that they didn't make it proprietary and didn't lock up the vendors.
Then, for an OS, IBM was going to choose between the dominant operating systems for microcomputers at the time, CPM (or was it CRM) and, IIRC, D-DOS... but IBM got a better offer from some totally unknown programmer (that would be Bill Gates) in a totally unheard-of little pipsqueak company (that would be Microsoft) with its flavor of DOS (MS-DOS). And again, IBM didn't lock up Microsoft to be its exclusive customer either.
What happened was, the PS-1 was a clever box... but now EVERYONE rushed to build competing boxes that did exactly the same thing with exactly the same software and components. Intel could sell the 8088 to anyone who wanted it. Gates ran around getting everyone to put MS-DOS on the boxes. Tons of computer companies made motherboards, components, etc. Everyone else could make boxes better/cheaper than IBM's.
IBM saw this waaay too late. The came out with the new version, the PS-2, its attempt to wrest control of the PC market. But Intel and Microsoft were way past them and didn't want to be stuck with IBM. Competitors made slightly-better boxes for cheaper and better customer service (never an IBM strength). The PC industry was born, and soon it left IBM in the dust.
Simply, IBM never saw the microcomputer as being capable of taking away business from its minis and mainframes. They were... obviously... dead wrong. Today, a single laptop probably has more computing power and memory than every mainframe IBM sold in 1975 combined. (That's my guess but probably not too wrong. I doubt IBM sold a terabyte of total memory in a year in the 1970s.)
By contrast, Steve Jobs took a different and, ultimately, far more lucrative approach. Apple locked up Motorola so that their chip would only be used in Apple computers. Apple's OS has always been proprietary (except... they licensed features of their GUI to Microsoft, which ultimately helped spawn Windows, after Microsoft won a copyright battle with Apple). That's why there have never been Apple "look-alikes," whereas the PC has always had zillions of clone competitors.
... but IBM got a better offer from some totally unknown programmer (that would be Bill Gates) in a totally unheard-of little pipsqueak company (that would be Microsoft)
Bill's mom worked with IBM and was instrumental in getting the funding to build said pipsqueak company. Millionaires creating billionaires. That said, even the secretaries that were in on the ground floor at MSFT became millionaires with all the stock options. Good for them!
In the category of worst personal decision made in my lifetime... finishing up my computer degree at Michigan... back then the recruiters would set up booths in the halls of the EECS building as spring approached.
I had interviews with Bell Labs and a dying IBM, and spent a few minutes in front of a booth for a growing company in the Seattle area that was offering a much lower starting salary, and these things called "stock options" that seemed rather worthless. Jerk me scoffed. They were used to it.
Not that much later, I'm sure every single person who took them seriously was a multi-millionaire. IBM was not a good fit for me, though I did learn an enormous amount about how to structure projects.
"By contrast, Steve Jobs took a different and, ultimately, far more lucrative approach."
For sure - Steve Jobs went over to the PARC (Palo Alto Research Center)- and just "borrowed" the interface that HP (Hewlett Packard) developed through its research efforts. I don't think Steve bothered paying HP for any of that intellectual capital. Sort of sounds like the Chinese these days - or for the last 30 years.
Xerox, not HP. In a few years, their research lab invented the graphical OS, the mouse, networking, laser printing, What You See Is What You Get Printing, and more. But Xerox leadership simply didn't understand the business opportunity and dismissed it. Because of that, the researchers found no issues demoing what they built to one Steve Jobs and the rest is history. The original Macintosh is in many ways just a Xerox Alto built 10 years later at 10% the price.
thanks for the clarification / correction.
Technology is an amazing field - and, it's impact on the world in less than half a century cannot be overstated.
Moore's Law comes to mind... "the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years".
The majority of the six billion phones that people on Earth carry with them - have more compute power that the Apollo missions that carried men to the moon.
My question is - how much of what's done on mobile devices, PC's, laptops, tablets, etc. - is really worth doing, and makes a difference in the lives we lead?
Xerox invented the first personal computer yet failed to market it. Xerox had built the Palo Alto Research Center at a high cost, and many items emerged from that center that you would not associate with the Xerox name, such as the mouse, the graphical user interface (GUI), and Ethernet.
That sure gives Jobs very little credit, which is ridiculous.
To be able to create an entirely new system, with all the innovation that was there in the early Macs, from scratch, and to deliver them as usable, awesome consumer products, well, that was QUITE an accomplishment.
Sure, he got a lot out of that famous demo at PARC. But lots of people could have seen that demo, and done exactly nothing about it.
To credit Jobs with creating those things itself is a stretch. It was Woz. Jobs was just the marketing asshole.
Today, a single laptop probably has more computing power and memory than every mainframe IBM sold in 1975 combined.
I read it somewhere on the internet, so it must be true. Your phone (this was 5 years ago or longer) has more computing power than everything that was in the first Space Shuttle and Ground Control.
Maybe. I don't know. But it sure sounds cool.
SJB - I'm not sure about the statement of "every single mainframe IBM sold in 1975 combined".
But, I do know a little bit about the Space Shuttle and Mission Control in Houston. The comparison of a phone five years ago - to that first mission - and associated compute power. The five year old phone -which would be the equivalent of an Apple iPhone 8 - would definitely have more power and memory than was ON the Space Shuttle. When you look at Mission Control - in total - Houston and Cape Canaveral - that little ole iPhone probably STILL outpowers it.
As a point of reference - the first Space Shuttle Launch took place in 1981. That was about the same time personal computers were first introduced.
I now have visions of a single guy sitting in Mission Control piloting the shuttle from an app on his phone.
Not to get even more geeky, IBM did approach Bill Gates but he referred them to another person that had already created an operating system - Gary Kildall who owned DR DOS. Kildall didn't sign their NDA, the reasons why, we don't fully know. Gates and Allen (the other co-founder) signed and the IBM deal was set.
"I had just finished my freshman year at Michigan...."
/jk - did Microsoft really supply the PCs you mention, as they had just barely come out with MS-DOS?
My teenage kids keep my young... and remind me the same way as the "jif".
In searching the googles, instead of my memory, it was an IBM PC.
LOL, my kids do the same, but without the gif comment - at least not to my face. I was figuring either IBM or maybe Compaq.
First computers I worked on/with were Univac 1108s, IBM 360/67s, and DEC PDP-8s. First interactions were with OS8, OS360, etc.. The Godot jokes were, as a student, waiting for the 360/67 to barf on my card stack commands. Also, waiting for the priests "behind the glass" to respond to my commands through my Digilog to Mount Tape X at 2am. Worked for a decade at number 2 computer company in the world... Fun times, galaxy far far away.
I was "there" as the entire computing landsacpe transformed. The major players were fascinating to work with. Gates, Olsen, Canion, Gerstner, Kapor, Esber, Wang, Ellison, etc..
Certainly OT but fun to think about those old computing days. Less productive but a whole lot weirder.
The actual IBM PC using the Intel didn't come out for a couple years, sometime in 1981. Working on MS-DOS was painful... worse than CP/M (which was IBM's original choice), the TRS-80, and definitely worse than the Apple II+, which didn't even support lower-case text.
I didn't start heavily using IBM until a few years later on DOS 3.1, and it still sucked as did the first few versions of Windows.
That said - nothing is worse than Microsoft Bob!
Goodness - next thing you know - people will be talking about Lotus 1-2-3, and Notes. The OS/2 operating system that was the PC OS equivalent of comparing Betamax to VHS for videotape recording./ VCRs.
Makes you think of faxes... telephone answering machines .. Yes, this was before the mobile / cellular phone was commercialized.
The good old days...
And pagers! Everyone with a pregnant wife had one!!
I fondly remember the Computer Engineering lab where we took punch cards, feed them through a reader that created a paper punch tape which we then read into a really old Teletype terminal for upload into the Intel lab computers. I think those computers were actually 8080s. Don't remember any of the programs actually being very useful. It was all and exercise in dealing with microprocessor based systems. The AMD 2900 bit slice stuff was much more fun and actually helped me land my first job at Bell Labs.
One of the first PC companies was located in Ann Arbor. Not a major brand. It was called an Interact and a company called Micro Video downtown handled the software for the system. You'd hook the computer to a television and use an A/B switch, as with early video game systems. Software was loaded through a built-in cassette player. I think it used an 8086, which celebrates 45 years since release tomorrow.
A lot of my high school evenings were filled with programs written on their version of Basic. I wore out reference cards with assembler codes, so I could "Poke" machine instructions directly into memory, because Basic was really slow. My first "job" was freelancing software to Micro Video to pay for upgrading my Interact from 8k of RAM to 16k.
Michigan called their version of Pascal ALGOL-W, and my first class at Michigan (the summer before my senior year in high school) lab time was in NUBS, using those giant machines on punchcards, then taking stacks of cards to the compiler, desperately hoping there wasn't a typo on any of those cards because processor time was expensive and it took 10-20 minutes to get a printout from a run.
Nerd memories... it's a miracle I didn't get completely cut from J.V. basketball. Probably deserved it.
We had an Interact. I think my dad invested in the company. Great idea. Bad investment. I remember the punch cards and NUBS although I have to admit my memory is fading.
thanks for making me feel old af lol
In 1977, I was the young (relatively) intern working for a small Ann Arbor company with about a dozen older engineers and as such, I was put in charge of our brand new Data General Nova 3/12. Back in those day, $75,000 bought you a 6’ rack with a paper tape (fan fold) reader, 2 8’ floppy drives, a CPU (Zilog Z80) and a whopping 128Kb of RAM, along with fans, power supply, and a front panel with 16 bit toggles, a load and index to the next memory load switch, and most importantly, an execute-from-location-0 switch.
My job every morning was to turn the power on, load 12 16-bit instructions in memory starting at location 0, load a paper tape with a bare-bones OS on it, then press the execute switch. The 12 instructions would then load the paper tape in memory and start executing the program. When prompted on the monochrome CRT, I would insert the run-time software floppy in drive 0, and run the GO command. After a little more huffing and puffing, you would get a login prompt and your computer would be ready to go. We thought we were Kings of the World.
And to think that someday you would connect to the internet via dialup modem.
The same day I got my little league pitching debut.
My first encounter with computers was typing out punchcards, and later using a brand spanking new Wang 3300 in college. Bought a PS-2 more than dozen years later.