A short history of the PC
Additional Links
Computer KnowHow
Computer Stupidities
a large collection of stories and anecdotes
about clueless computer users

1969
The first microprocessor has been developed by the American company Intel

1974
The American company MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry system) builds the first minicomputer Altair 8080

1975
Bill Gates (19) with his partner Paul Allen establish their company in Redmond. They want to transfer the program language BASIC to the Altair

1976
The company Apple becomes established in California

1977
The Apple II is the first personnel computer with floppy drive

1979
At the Palo Alto Research center (PARC) Xerox develops the first computer with mouse and graphic user surface, the XeroxStar

1981
First IBM-PC with M-DOS 1.0 of the company from Redmond

1982
Apple commercializes the first computer with mouse and graphic user surface, Lisa, by means of the Xerox-invention

1983
the company from Redmond commercializes the text processing word and starts with the development of Windows.

1984
Hewlett-Packard shows the first laser printer with technology of Canon. The Apple-Macintosh comes to the market. Digitally Equipment presents Gem, the first graphic user surface

1985
the company from Redmond sells Windows 1.0 for 100 dollars, however there is not much user software

1986
The Pakistanian brothers Basit and Amjad Alvi issue the first computer virus, it attacks PC with the operating system M-DOS

1990
Windows 3.0 becomes the bestseller and this is the bginning of the end of M-DOS

1991
Linus Torwalds, a Finnish student, starts with the development of Linux, a PC-variant of the Unix system. Tim Berners-Lee introduces the World Wide Web (WWW) at the Atomic Research Center in Geneva

1994
The browser Netscape Navigator makes the World Wide Web popular

1995
Due to a tremendous advertising campaign the company from Redmond sells more than 4 million licenses of the new operating system Windows 95 in the first days

1996
US-Robotics commercializes the pilot, the earliest ancestor of all Palm organizers. Sun and Oracle want to break the monopoly of the company from Redmond with the Net-PC, which is nearly maintenance-free and loads its software over a computer network. The attempt fails

1997
the company from Redmond introduces the Internet Explorer 4, as a counterpart to Netscape. Netscape loses thereupon the "Browser-war"

1998
Apple comes back with the designer-PC iMac. With computer and monitor in one housing and without floppy drive

2001
One uses tray-PC for surfing the internet. The computer conquers the Handys. First Smartphones come to the market