| October |
IBM hires Allen and Gates of Microsoft
to create an operating system for their new personal computer, then under
development. However, Microsoft has no OS at the time so they buy the rights
to sell to IBM a CP/M clone called QDOS "Quick
and Dirty Operating System" from Tim
Patterson of Seattle Computer Products for $50,000.
Microsoft renames the operating system PC-DOS. IBM allows Gates and Allen
to keep the marketing rights to the operating system. |
| |
Mead Data Central introduces the NEXIS service, providing online texts of various print publications. |
| |
Duke University graduate Students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis establish USENET. One of the first computer network communications systems, it is conceived as a "poor man's ARPANET." |
| |
Bell Labs develops digital cellular
telephone technology, offering better sound quality, greater channel capacity
and lower cost than analog. |
| 1981 |
Intel introduces the 8088 microprocessor,
a low-cost version of the 8086 using an eight-bit external bus. |
| |
Xerox introduces the 8010 Star Information System,
the first commercial system to incorporate "a bitmapped display, a window-based graphical user interface, icons, folders, mouse, Ethernet networking, file serves, printer servers and e-mail." |
| |
Osborne produces
the first commercially successful portable computer, the Osborne 1. It
weighs twenty-three pounds, runs the CP/M operating system, and sells for
$1795, with $2000 worth of software bundled with the computer. |
| |
There are 213 hosts on ARPANET; a new host is added
approximately every 20 days. |
| July |
Microsoft buys all rights to QDOS from Seattle
Computer Products, and renames it MS-DOS. |
| August 12 |
IBM introduces their open architecture
personal computer based on the Intel 8088 processor. It runs MS-DOS, a
16-bit operating system developed by Microsoft. |
| 1982 |
Sony releases the first
commercial electronic camera,
the Sony Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera). Not a digital camera, it is
actually a video camera that takes video freeze-frames. |
| |
The Federal Communications Commission
authorizes commercial cellular telephone service for the United States. |
| |
Mitchell Kapor, previously head of development at Visicorp, and Jonathan Sachs, with backing from Ben Rosen, found Lotus Development Corporation. Kapor, who had been a teacher of Transcendental Meditation, names the company after 'The Lotus Position' or "Padmasana'' |
| |
The science fiction film Blade
Runner, loosely based on the novel Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick,
depicts a dystopic Los Angeles in 2019.
In the film "genetically manufactured beings called replicants—visually indistinguishable from adult humans—are used for dangerous and degrading work in Earth's 'off-world colonies.' Following a small replicant uprising, replicants become illegal on Earth; and specialist police units called 'blade runners' are trained to hunt down and 'retire' (kill) escaped replicants on Earth." This film inspires the science fiction
writer William Gibson. |
| |
SUN Microsystems
announces its first UNIX workstation. The founders are all students at Stanford
University. The name of the company originally stands for Stanford University
Network. |
| |
In cooperation with the Library of Congress,
The National Endowment for the Humanities begins funding the United
States Newspaper Program-- "a
cooperative national effort among the states and the federal government
to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm newspapers published in the
United States from the eighteenth century to the present." |
| |
The GRiD
Compass 1100, introduced by Grid
Systems Corporation, is probably the first commercial computer created
in a "clamshell" laptop format, and one of the first truly portable machines.
It includes a magnesium clamshell case with a screen that folds flat over
the keyboard, a switching power supply, electro-luminescent display, non-volatile
bubble memory, and built-in modem. |
| |
Disney's movie Tron is
one of the first films to incorporate computer graphics or computer animation,
rendered on a Cray-1 Supercomputer, which also appears in the film. |
| |
IBM introduces the DB2 relational
database management system for mainframe computers. |
| |
DCA (Defense Communications Agency) and ARPA establish
the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as
the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, for ARPANET. This leads
to one of the first definitions of an “internet” as a connected set of
networks, specifically those using TCP/IP, and the “Internet” as connected
TCP/IP internets. |
| |
Frederick Sanger and colleagues sequence
the entire genome of bacteriophage lambda using a random shotgun technique.
This is the first whole genome shotgun (WGS) sequence. Sanger, “Nucleotide
Sequence of Bacteriophage Lambda,” J.
Mol. Biol. 162 (1982): 729-73. |
| |
"A program called "Elk Cloner' is
credited with being the first
computer virus to appear 'in
the wild' -- that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was
created."
Written by Rich Skrenta,
it attaches itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spreads
by floppy disk. |
| January 8 |
After thousands of hours of testimony (testimony
of over 950 witnesses, 87 in court, the remainder by deposition) and the
submission of tens of thousands of exhibits, the anti-trust case U.S.
v. IBM is
withdrawn on the grounds that the case was "without merit."
30,000,000 pages of documents were generated in the course of this anti-trust
case. |
| August |
Commodore issues the Commodore 64. it is "the first cheap home computer." It looks like a bulky keyboard, but includes color graphics, and excels at playing early video games. Between 1982 and 1984 30,000,000 units will be sold, making it the best-selling personal computer model of this era. Roughly 10,000 commercial programs will be produced for this computer. |
| November |
IBM introduces the Scanmaster
1, a mainframe
computer terminal designed to scan, transmit and store images of documents
electronically. |
| December |
John
Warnock and Chuck Gerschke
found Adobe
Systems. Warnock develops the PostScript page
description language, enabling the creation of scalable digital type-fonts
and desktop publishing.
Postscript is a simplified version of the InterPress language that Warnock
developed at Xerox PARC. |
| 1983 |
The first commercial analog cellular
service is made available in Chicago by Ameritech. |
| |
The TRS-80,
Model 100, introduces the concept of a “laptop”
computer. More than 6,000,000 will be sold. |
| |
Relational Software renames itself Oracle
Corporation to
align itself with its flagship relational database management system, Oracle
version 3. |
| |
Richard
Stallman plans the GNU free
software project. |
| |
Six million personal computers are sold
in the United States. |
| |
Microsoft announces that Windows,
a graphical user interface (GUI) for MS-DOS computers, is under development. |
| |
ARPANET splits into ARPANET and MILNET.
MILNET, designed for unclassified U.S. Department of Defense traffic, will
be integrated into the Defense Data Network created the previous year. |
| |
Control Video
Corporation founded by William van Miester offers video
games "by telephone" for Atari
VCS game machine owners through a service called GameLine.
Using variable speed adaptive modem technology, GameLine plans other services
for the millions of game machine owners who may upgrade their units with
programmable adaptors. The company nearly goes bankrupt. After revamping
its product line, the company will change its name to Quantum Computer
Services in 1985. In 1991 the company will be renamed American Online (AOL). |
| January |
Lotus Development Corporation releases Lotus 1-2-3. An integrated spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manger, it becomes the first "killer app" for the PC. In 1983 sales of 1-2-3 amount to $54,000,000, making Lotus the largest independent software vendor in the world. |
| January 1 |
ARPANET requires that all connected
machines use TCP/IP. TCP/ IP becomes the core Internet protocol and replaces
NCP (Network Control Protocol) entirely. |
| November |
Domain
Name System (DNS), designed by Paul
V. Mockapetris, is introduced. The six original
domains are .edu, .gov, .com, .mil, .org, .net, and .int. |
