On This Date in 1981... IBM Changed the World

On this date 28 years ago, IBM released its first personal computer (model number 5150). They’ve been trying to get it to work properly ever since.

That first IBM PC ran on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor. Those uninitiated in computer lingo should know that MHz is short for Mega Hurtz, a term applied to measure the speed of a tormented turtle with four injured legs.

Thus, 4.77 MHz would mean 4.77 times the speed of the aforementioned turtle, which is approximately as fast as a snail suffering from intense, crippling vertigo.

It is also interesting to note that IBM’s initial personal computer came equipped with 16 kilobytes of memory, expandable to 256K. It also included one or two 160K floppy disk drives and an optional color monitor. So, basically, it could be used as a glorified calculator or a decorative end table.

The price tag for the 1981 PC was a whopping $1,565, which is the equivalent of spending over $3,705 in 2008, according to the Consumer Price Index (which doesn’t have the equivalent value for 2009 available yet).

For $3,700 today, you could actually buy a real computer: a Mac.

Essentially, for the same price you could receive a 24-inch iMac with 8 GB 1066 MHZ (that’s faster than a thousand severely injured turtles!) DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB.



The iMac comes equipped with 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and a 1.0 Terabyte serial ATA Drive (which can hold a quarter of a million songs). You could also upgrade to a faster graphics package (ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB), a wireless mouse and keyboard, and buy iWorks 2009 and Final Cut Express pre-installed plus the three-year AppleCare Proetection Plan!

But, that’s just me.

Still, I realize that the pioneer company IBM did indeed pave the way for Apple to come in an make the computer market much, much cooler later on, so KUDOS to them.

Incidentally, four months after IBM introduced its PC, Time Magazine actually named the computer as its “Man of the Year.”

One month after that, Time printed a retraction realizing that, indeed, a computer is not a person though the resemblance was astonishing similar.

Time opted instead to give the award to a duo of film actors who had dominated the box office in 1981: Harrison Ford for making archeology cool again thanks to his role as Indiana Jones in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Dudley Moore for his stark portrayal of the devastating effects of alcoholism in the profoundly tragic film Arthur.