IBM 5150 PC... (via Wiki)
The late 70’s saw the birth of personal computers, which at the time were being developed in garages by home-brew enthusiasts (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were among those enthusiasts). Not soon after, companies such as RadioShack, Commodore International and Apple were successfully selling their own affordable take on desktop PCs to both companies and individual consumers. When 1980 rolled around, product test engineer (at the time) for IBM William Lowe came up with an idea to get the company into the burgeoning personal computing market (it was, however, the leading provider of corporate mainframes at the time). He believed it was possible to conceive, engineer and manufacture a personal computer within oneyear’s time, which was unheard of back then. The company took a chance on Williams’s idea and he went forth and compiled an engineering team, known as the ‘Dirty Dozen’, to make the new project a reality. Instead of designing proprietary technology and software, William and his team looked to the fledgling Silicon Valley companies for off the shelf parts.
William C. Lowe (via wiki)
A year later, the iconic beige-box was born, which was a surprise to those in the industry, including IBM. Known as the IBM 5150 Personal Computer, it featured an Intel 8088 (clocked @ 4.77MHz) processor, 16 to 256kb of memory running Microsoft’s DOS 1.0 operating system. The set-up cost consumers a mere $1,565, however that was without a monitor or even disk drives, although they were available in different configurations of the 5150. After the PC’s release, Apple took note of IBM’s first offering and actually placed a whole page ad in the Wall Street Journal stating ‘Welcome IBM. Seriously’ as something of a blasé taunt. Microsoft founder Bill Gates was apparently at Apple’s headquarters at the time of IBM’s unveiling and later stated that it took Apple a full year to realize what had just happened. The 5150 was launched in August of 1981 and by October of that same year, droves of people were dropping $1,000 deposits just to get their hands on one. By the end of the following year (1982), the company was selling roughly one PC a minute per business day (9 to 5). The 5150 was so popular it became known as the ‘PC’, which is still widely used today. Thanks to William’s efforts and insight, the desktop PC is still going strong today and can be found most anywhere on the planet! Unfortunately for us, we have lost yet another entrepreneur of the technology most of us take for granted. William C. Lowe, 72 passed away on October 19, 2013 of a heart attack. He is survived by his wife Cristina, his 4 children and 10 grandchildren.
William C. Lowe
January 15, 1941 – October 19, 2013
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