AdminXP.com: PC basics: history

PC basics: history

1946 ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) - First electronic computer introduced in 1946 in Penn State University, USA. It contained 18 thousand vacuum tubes and thousands of capacitors, resistors and relays. Cooling was provided by two jet engines. It weighed 30 tons and took up 150 m2. It consumed 180 kW of power and it could perform roughly 5000 operations per second. Programming was executed by manipulating switches. It was used by American army.

1960/1970 - The Unix operating system was founded.

1967 The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the predecessor of Internet, was founded.

1971 The Intel's first microprocessor: 4004

1975 MITS Altair 8800 - A milestone in the history of personal computers introduced in the Popular Electronics Magazine. It was sold for 395 USD. Paul Allen and Bill Gates began the development of BASIC for Altair and founded Microsoft.

1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded the Apple Computer company and began the sale of the Apple I PC. It had no keyboard, monitor or source, it was just a basic system unit in a wooden box.

1977 Apple II

1981 IBM PC. Intel 8088 Processor, 16KB memory, floppy disk 160 KB and black/white monitor 11,5", operating system Microsoft MS-DOS 1.0. At the beginning of 80's, 80 % of all computers were using the MS-DOS OS, the rest were using other operating system, mostly MAC OS and Unix.

1984 IBM PC AT. Intel 80286 8 MHz Processor, 512 KB RAM, floppy disk 1,2 MB, HDD 12 MB and 12" monitor.

1985 Microprocessor Intel386™

1987 Apple Macintosh II. It was based on CPU Motorola MC68020, 16 MHz. Other components varied: 40 - 80MB HDD, from xxx KB up to 68MB RAM.

1989 The Intel486™ processor

1991 WWW (World Wide Web) was founded

1992 Microsoft Windows 3.1 was brought on the market and sold more than 25 million licenses within the first year. Intel: 80286,

1994 Linux 1.0 was introduced.

1995 Microsoft Windows 95 was brought on the market. Intel® Pentium® Pro Processor

1996 Windows NT 4.0

1997 Intel® Pentium® II, AMD-K6® processor

1998 Microsoft Windows 98 was brought on the market.

1999 Microsoft introduced the Internet Explorer 5 . More than 1 million copies of IE 5 were downloaded within a week. Some other new products appeared on the market: Microsoft: Office 2000; Intel: Pentium III. AMD Athlon™ processor. With the upcoming year of 2000, everybody feared that machines which used 2 digits in a year would not be able to process a year with 4 digits. However, most worries proved pointless.

2000 Windows ME and Windows 2000 Professional and Server. Intel® Pentium® 4 processor. AMD Athlon™ 1Ghz processor.

2001 Windows XP, Office XP

2003 News: Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Microsoft Office 2003. AMD introduced AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon™ 64 processors, built on the AMD64 technology.

2006 Intel® Core™2 Processors

July 2006 - Microsoft ended the support for Windows 98 and ME - no new updates will be released

2007 - New products on the market: Windows Vista, Windows Longhorn Server, Office 2007. Prices of processors and PCs continuously fall. PCs with Internet connection are predicted to be part of every household. Speculations about OS market leaders arise. Linux popularity grows, though mostly on servers. Parameters of a standard PC: CPU 2Ghz and higher, 512MB RAM (preferably 1GB and higher). 80GB disks and higher become a must. Graphic cards of high quality and DVD drives are recommended. LCD replace older CRT monitors.