Lotus 123 was a spreadsheet program created by Lotus Software, which later became part of IBM. It was THE killer app of the mid 1980s, outselling it’s competitor VisiCalc. It helped plant the IBM PC firmly in the business world. Originally written by a Harvard student, it was supposedly sold…
The Lisa was built by Apple Computer and development originally began in the late 1970s. It was their first attempt at designing a personal computer with a graphical user interface. First introduced in January 1983, it was the first PC with a GUI and mouse. It used a 5mhz Motorola…
First proposed to the Audio Engineering Society by Dave Smith in 1981, with the first specification produced in 1983. Pronounced middy, an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a standard adopted by the electronic music industry for controlling devices, such as synthesizers and sound cards, that emit music. At minimum,…
A family of operating systems for personal computers originally released in 1985 with version 1.0 from Microsoft. Windows dominates the personal computer world, running, by some estimates, on 90 percent of all personal computers. The remaining 10 percent are mostly Macintosh computers. Like the Macintosh operating environment, Windows provides a…
Originally written in 1983 for the IBM PC running DOS by Richard Brodie, Word has gone on to become the most dominant word processing software on the planet both in the home and in the office. Versions for the Mac, UNIX, OS/2 , and Windows arrived in the mid 80s….
Compaq Computer Corporation was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, three senior managers who left Texas Instruments and invested $1,000 each to form their own company. Sketched on a paper place mat in a Houston pie shop, the first product was a portable personal…
The Commodore 64 was unveiled to the public in August, 1982 by Commodore Business Machines. It offered previously never seen graphics and sound performance for $595, which amazed even their competitors at the time. The graphics and sound chips were originally intended for a next generation game console, but the…
In 1982, 15 year old student Richard Skrenta wrote the first known computer virus in the wild. Also known as the Apple II virus, Elk Cloner spread by infecting Apple II systems via infected floppy disks. Although not causing any deliberate harm, it was extremely annoying. On every 50th boot,…
First launched in 1982, this system was capable of 500 megaflops and was the first multi-processor supercomputer. It ran the company’s first operating system based on UNIX, UNICOS. It was the descendent of the Cray 1, and was built by Cray Research. By 1986, the system’s XMP-22 model sported 4…
The story of TRON starts in the fall of 1975 when a young animation artist named Steven Lisberger witnessed a demonstration of computer generated imagery during a gathering of Boston-area filmmakers. Dr. Phillip Mittelman, president and founder of the Mathematical Application Group Inc. hoped to generate interest and ultimately business…