40 years… 40 years since the first Personal Computer known now as PC was launched and invaded thousands after thousands, millions after millions homes in the world and are now an important part of our life.
On August 12th 1981 IBM released its IBM-PC Model 5150, first of its name and ancestors of most of all computers running in the world.
Some might say that is a lie! What about Commodore, Apple II, Atari etc… Huh!? They were personal computers too.
And on one hand, they’re half right : several of those personal computers were released way before 1981 and sort nowadays in the ‘PC’ category.
But actually it is a matter of technical spec and wording.
IBM was the first to introduce the acronym PC and the first line of “Compatible PC”.
IBM PCs were based (as all nowadays computers) on the x86 instruction set architectures and were intended to be fully backward compatible no matter additions, extensions added to the x86 instruction over the years. Which is, 40 years later, still the case. And that is what makes the IBM-PC Model 5150 the first ‘PC’.