The personal computer arrives

The Apple II (1977) and the IBM PC (1981) turned the microprocessor into a mass-market appliance, with VisiCalc and later DOS as its applications.

Why it matters

Computing moved from the machine room to the desk and then the bedroom. When individuals owned their tools, hobbyists became an industry — the culture that built the open internet.

People

Steve Wozniak · Steve Jobs · Bill Gates

Threads

This event sits on Computation.

Related events

• 1971

  A computer on a chip

  Intel's 4004 packed a complete CPU — 2,300 transistors — onto one chip, built for a Japanese calculator and priced accordingly.

  Computing · americas

• 1991

  A student posts a hobby operating system

  Linus Torvalds announced Linux 'just a hobby, won't be big and professional'; combined with GNU and the open-source method, it became the world's infrastructure.

  Computing · europe

• 1991

  The World Wide Web opens to everyone

  Tim Berners-Lee's CERN project — URLs, HTTP, HTML — was released royalty-free; by 1993 Mosaic made it visual, and the web took over the internet.

  Communication · europe

From this site

• Journey · A computer at homeEarly computing years

Sources

• Computer History Museum — Personal Computers