Category Archives: 1981

Wordperfect

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wordperfect1WordPerfect was developed by Brian Bastion and Dr.Allen Ashton in 1981 at Satellite Software International. Later renamed WordPerfect Corp., the application was ported to the IBM PC in 1982 and was an immediate success, becoming one of the most popular and dominant word processors on the market. The height of it’s appeal was in 1986 with the release of version 4.2, which pushed number one contender Wordstar out of the top spot on the Windows platform. The most successful version however was 5.1 for DOS released in 1989, which included Mac style drop down menus, support for tables, as well as the program’s first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) GUI editor.

WordPerfect for Windows did not appear until 1991, and by then it was too late as Microsoft Word was beginning it’s takeover of the market. Several technological incompatibilities with Windows including the inability to support some languages caused WordPerfect sales to suffer. The product line was sold to Novell in 1994, who incorporated the technology into their GroupWise suite. It was later sold to Corel in 1996, but by then sales had suffered a decline it never recovered from. Corel sells the product today to niche markets. In 2006, Corel announced a new Wordperfect office suite, Wordperfect X3

DN-100

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dn100Apollo Computer unveiled the first work station, its DN100, offering more power than some minicomputers at a fraction of the price. Apollo Computer and Sun Microsystems, another early entrant in the work station market, optimized their machines to run the computer-intensive graphics programs common in engineering.

Osborne-1

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osborne1Introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1981, the Osborne-1 was the brain child of Adam Osborne, a computer columnist, writer, and engineer. It was co-developed with Lee Felsenstein, and Lee designed it. The goal was a truly integrated computer that could go wherever the user want to. The machine was shipped as a full package including all the hardware and software a user could need including: 64K RAM, Z-80 CPU, 5″ CRT, two floppy drives, keyboard, serial ports, CP/M operating system, WordStar, SuperCalc, and two versions of BASIC: CBASIC and MBASIC. The machine also had the ability to connect with scientific equipment via a built-in IEEE-488 interface, and could run an optional external monitor via the built-in port. Not only was the machine complete, it was cheap – $1795.

The Osborne weighed a hefty 24lbs. altogether. Try lugging that around an airport!

IBM PC

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ibmpcThe first IBM PC ran on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor. The PC came equipped with 16 kilobytes of memory, expandable to 256k. The PC came with one or two 160k floppy disk drives and an optional color monitor. The price tag started at $1,565, which would be nearly $4,000 today. What really made the IBM PC different from previous IBM computers was that it was the first one built from off the shelf parts (called open architecture) and marketed by outside distributors (Sears & Roebucks and Computerland). The Intel chip was chosen because IBM had already obtained the rights to manufacture the Intel chips. IBM had used the Intel 8086 for use in its Displaywriter Intelligent Typewriter in exchange for giving Intel the rights to IBM’s bubble memory technology.

MS-DOS

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This operating system originally began life as QDOS, created by computer company Seattle Computer Products in 1980. Microsoft would eventually purchase the system for $50k and license it to IBM.

MS-DOS 1.0 was released in 1981 for IBM-PCs. The latest version is MS-DOS 6.22, released in 1994. Originally, IBM and Microsoft produced different versions of the software, although they were largely identical. It is reputed that IBM found over 300 bugs in the code and wound up re-writing much of it. Most OEM’s that used it also changed it’s name until Microsoft later insisted it not be changed. IBM was the only company that refused to do so. While it is not commonly used by itself today, it still can be accessed from most of the current versions of Windows.