Researched
Personal Computer
From the hobbyist Altair (1975) through the Apple II (1977) to the IBM PC (1981): the computer moves into offices and homes.
Open in the interactive tree →The 1981 IBM PC, with an open architecture and an Intel processor, became a standard that dozens of makers cloned. Spreadsheets and word processors made it a work tool, and graphical interfaces (Macintosh 1984, Windows) made it a mass product. This created the mass market for software and the demand for ever faster chips.
Prerequisites
- Typewriter & Keyboard1868The PC inherited the typewriter's QWERTY keyboard
- Mouse and graphical interface1968Windows, icons and the mouse made the PC usable without training
- Microprocessor1971
Unlocks
- Unicode1991
- Graphics Processor (GPU)1999