by Helium01

Created on: October 16, 2009

You are staring at the screen of a personal computer right now, but have you ever wondered how the personal computer got started? How did the personal computer come about? Below is a brief overview of the history of the personal computer.

In the beginning there were mainframes, and for a while mainframes were the best available computers. Most of these machines were at major colleges and government research facilities. These machines did not serve the needs of the average consumer who would eventually want a computer at home on which to play games.

In 1981, the personal computer was born. The company to release this great invention was IBM. They saw the niche that wasn't being filled and filled it with the 5150 PC. At the time the 5150 was a great machine running at 4.77 MHz with an optional 10 megabyte hard drive. If you didn't have the hard drive, you had to keep everything on 5.25 inch floppy disks.

The next contender to enter the personal computer market was Apple. The first computer released by Apple that became popular was the Macintosh. This computer was not only the second type of personal computers; it had a user interface and a mouse. No more looking at command line prompts. This great invention came out about 3 years after the IBM 5150 and ran at 8 MHz.

During the 1980's the personal computer saw a lot of upgrades and updates. Microsoft started a fight with Apple over the GUI interface with Windows 1.1. Modems were becoming more mainstream so people could talk to people all over the world. People became scared of computer hackers with the movie "War Games", and the FBI started raiding people for computer crimes.

Into the 1990's, the personal computer became directed more at the "average Joe" and less about computer geeks and the rich. The invention of the CD-ROM for the PC made life much easier. Also the internet started to become mainstream enough for the average consumer. Finally, at this time, IBM and Apple had competition from companies like Compaq, Packard Bell, Dell, Gateway, and other IBM-compatible computer companies. Everything was going well for the world of the personal computer.

Moving into the next century, the personal computer stopped being just a tool and more of a center of most people's world. With broadband access coming about, people could watch videos, chat with people on camera, and even listen to good quality music.

This is where the computer age is today. It is hard to believe that the personal computer came about such a short time ago. Today computers have terabytes of hard drive space, gigahertz of processing power and many other advanced features. Only time will tell where the personal computer will be another decade from now.

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