Personal computer:
The Altair 8800 is generally accepted as the first Personal Computer. It was designed by Ed Roberts (where is he today?) and introduced by MITS in April 1974 at some of the computer clubs that were formed in what is now known as Silicon Valley as a build-it-yourself-unit with chassis, power supply, system PCB, and loaded with 256 bytes of memory. It had been previously announced in popular Electronics and MITS received some 4000 orders for the machine BEFORE it was available. There were no I/O devices, didn't have a monitor or a keyboard and there was no Operating System available. You programmed the system from the front panel (octal) switches. This first desktop computer spawned the idea that computers could be built small and developed without the resources of IBM, Univac, Burroughs and the other mega powers of the computers business at that time.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote the Basic comiler used by MITS which was introduced in July of 1975 and started the software revolution for this micro's which ultimately spawned Apple, Sinclair, Kaypro and the other iPersonals of the time.
Microsoft had IMB at their doorstep needing an O/S in order to market their first Personal Computer. Microsoft didn't have the combination of OS and Applications software that IBM was looking for so they sent them to Digital Research and Gary Kildall who wrote the CP/M operating system. IBM wanted a commitment from someone by the end of the week to provide an O/S for their entry into the Personal Computer market. IBM went back to Microsoft a second time looking for their O/S and Microsoft capitalized on this opportunity by buying QDOS from SCP and selling it with their BASIC interpreter to IBM for $80K as PC/DOS 1.0 but kept the right to license MS-DOS to other companies.
IBM Clone:
The first true IBM bus compatible Clone PC was the MPC introduced by Columbia Data Systems during June 1982. There had been several MS-DOS compatible personals up to that time that ran DOS programs but they had proprietary business or designs that limited their broad acceptance.
Columbia shipped the first hard drive based systems (5MB formatted capacity) before IBM did. Their controller was not compatible with the controller that IBM shipped later and Columbia quickly responded with a (mostly) IBM compatible replacement.
PC Spreadsheet:
The first electronic spreadsheet written for the personal computer was VisiCalc.
Popular Word Processor:
The fist popular word processor for micro-computers was Electric Pencil written by Michael Shrayer. It was available in December 1976.
Integrated Circuit:
The first integrated circuit was produced by Texas Instruments on Sep 12th 1958. Prior to this development an electronic circuit consisted of resistors, capacitors, transistors and wiring. Each component was manufactured separately by different processes and integrated into an electronic circuit on a PCB using wiring/etches and solder connections to create a working circuit.
Jack Kilby came up with the idea of creating an Integrated Circuit using a silicon wafer. By adding impurities to the silicon they could create resistance, capacitance, transistor junctions and conductive paths on a single silicon Chip. This IC would be a self contained circuit with no external wiring or solder connections.
The first handheld calculator using ICs was produced by TI in 1967. It performed the 4 basic functions of the calculators of those days: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Floppy Drive:
Alan Shugart is generally regarded as the inventor of the floppy drive while working for IBM in the late 1960s. He later founded Shugart Associates to design and manufacture floppy drives. David Noble, one of Shugart's engineers at IBM actually came up with the idea of 8-inch flexible media inside of a cloth lined jacket.
The Altair 8800 is generally accepted as the first Personal Computer. It was designed by Ed Roberts (where is he today?) and introduced by MITS in April 1974 at some of the computer clubs that were formed in what is now known as Silicon Valley as a build-it-yourself-unit with chassis, power supply, system PCB, and loaded with 256 bytes of memory. It had been previously announced in popular Electronics and MITS received some 4000 orders for the machine BEFORE it was available. There were no I/O devices, didn't have a monitor or a keyboard and there was no Operating System available. You programmed the system from the front panel (octal) switches. This first desktop computer spawned the idea that computers could be built small and developed without the resources of IBM, Univac, Burroughs and the other mega powers of the computers business at that time.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote the Basic comiler used by MITS which was introduced in July of 1975 and started the software revolution for this micro's which ultimately spawned Apple, Sinclair, Kaypro and the other iPersonals of the time.
Microsoft had IMB at their doorstep needing an O/S in order to market their first Personal Computer. Microsoft didn't have the combination of OS and Applications software that IBM was looking for so they sent them to Digital Research and Gary Kildall who wrote the CP/M operating system. IBM wanted a commitment from someone by the end of the week to provide an O/S for their entry into the Personal Computer market. IBM went back to Microsoft a second time looking for their O/S and Microsoft capitalized on this opportunity by buying QDOS from SCP and selling it with their BASIC interpreter to IBM for $80K as PC/DOS 1.0 but kept the right to license MS-DOS to other companies.
IBM Clone:
The first true IBM bus compatible Clone PC was the MPC introduced by Columbia Data Systems during June 1982. There had been several MS-DOS compatible personals up to that time that ran DOS programs but they had proprietary business or designs that limited their broad acceptance.
Columbia shipped the first hard drive based systems (5MB formatted capacity) before IBM did. Their controller was not compatible with the controller that IBM shipped later and Columbia quickly responded with a (mostly) IBM compatible replacement.
PC Spreadsheet:
The first electronic spreadsheet written for the personal computer was VisiCalc.
Popular Word Processor:
The fist popular word processor for micro-computers was Electric Pencil written by Michael Shrayer. It was available in December 1976.
Integrated Circuit:
The first integrated circuit was produced by Texas Instruments on Sep 12th 1958. Prior to this development an electronic circuit consisted of resistors, capacitors, transistors and wiring. Each component was manufactured separately by different processes and integrated into an electronic circuit on a PCB using wiring/etches and solder connections to create a working circuit.
Jack Kilby came up with the idea of creating an Integrated Circuit using a silicon wafer. By adding impurities to the silicon they could create resistance, capacitance, transistor junctions and conductive paths on a single silicon Chip. This IC would be a self contained circuit with no external wiring or solder connections.
The first handheld calculator using ICs was produced by TI in 1967. It performed the 4 basic functions of the calculators of those days: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Floppy Drive:
Alan Shugart is generally regarded as the inventor of the floppy drive while working for IBM in the late 1960s. He later founded Shugart Associates to design and manufacture floppy drives. David Noble, one of Shugart's engineers at IBM actually came up with the idea of 8-inch flexible media inside of a cloth lined jacket.