Booting Up: The Rise of the PC

The Radio Shack TRS-80 was the most successful of the 1977 Trinity.

The success of these computers was in part due to Radio Shack’s nationwide retail presence. These machines were sold direct to consumers out of the company’s storefronts.

When the TRS-80 was announced, Radio Shack’s president Lewis Kornfeld declared: "This device is inevitably in the future of everyone in the civilized world—in some way—now and so far as ahead as one can think."

The “Crash of 1983” occurred due to a flooded market, the rise of personal computers as gaming systems, and highly anticipated (but poor quality) games like "E.T." and "Pac-Man."

With success in the home video gaming market firmly in place thanks to the Atari 2600, the company decided to enter the home computing market.

In 1979, the Atari 8-bit line was introduced, which included the 400 and 800 models. Unsurprisingly, Atari’s computers were friendly to video game players, with built-in joystick ports and graphic and sound performance on par with the later Commodore 64.

The introduction of the IBM 5150 in 1981 saw one of the largest computing companies in the world shift their focus from unwieldy mainframe computers into the booming personal computing market.

The idea of internally producing a personal computer was at odds with corporate culture at IBM at the time. One naysayer remarked that “IBM bringing out a personal computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance."

Nonetheless, the team of engineers assigned to “Project Chess” developed what became known as the IBM PC in one short year. This computer was capable of processing data at a higher speed than the room-sized computers that the company was known for, ran on Intel microprocessors, and had a Microsoft operating system.

The Commodore 64 made home computing accessible to a broad public in the 1980s. Released in 1982 as a successor to the VIC-20, the C64 was priced cheaply and was essential in establishing the home computing market. As an early platform for growing consumer-friendly software and game industries, it remains one of the top-selling personal computers of all time.

The Osborne 1 is the first mass-produced portable computer--a suitcase-sized "luggable" system weighing 23.5 pounds.

It was one of the first bundled systems, with an inclusive package of hardware and software including word processing, spreadsheet, and BASIC programs.

Despite initial success, when Osborne declared bankruptcy in 1983, it became the prototype victim of sudden, devastating, technological crashes in high-tech economies.

The Apple Lisa is the first personal computer to successfully promote the Graphical User Interface.

GUIs made computing accessible. People could use a mouse to click on task-specific icons, rather than typing instructions into a text-based command line.

The Lisa II is similar to the Lisa I, with a lower price point and a smaller, 3.5" floppy disc drive.

In 1984, the Apple Macintosh took the Apple Lisa’s “graphical user interface” and mouse driven desktop environment to a much larger scale.

Despite the Mac's relatively high price, its user-friendly features helped it demystify computing for many people without a technical bent.

This computer is a Macintosh 512k, released in 1985 with increased memory.

The iMac G3 was "the computer that saved Apple." This highly successful computer was optimized for education and web-surfing. Steve Jobs declared it married "the excitement of the Internet with the simplicity of a Macintosh."

Available in 13 colors, Jonathan Ive designed its distinctive translucent case. Ive's design challenged the notion that computers had to be encased in opaque beige boxes.

The One Laptop Per Child initiative was founded to increase access to affordable computers and to impact education through digital literacy in the developing world.

The rugged case of the XO-1 model was designed by Yves Behar at fuseproject.

The iPhone elevated the idea of the cellphone as pocket computer--powerful technology in a sleek package. This handheld is a music player, a mobile phone, and an internet-enabled device in one, with a trendsetting touchscreen interface.

The iPhone's release in 2007 was a well-choreographed media event, with potential buyers waiting in lines for hours at Apple stores across the country.

The Apple 1’s exposed motherboard may look alien to people today, but in 1976, it was the first fully assembled personal computer available to customers. The “out of the box” computers that followed in 1977 also contributed to computers entering the home.

Today, the inventive aspects of the machines presented in this group continue to reverberate: the affordability of the Commodore 64, the “portability” of the Osborne 1, the ubiquity of the first successful smartphones and cognitive computing.