The public history of the PC began in August 1981, when IBM first announced The IBM Personal Computer. . This was The original PC. The time period for the development of this landmark, legacy product was approximately a year. It must be remembered that IBM was a centralized committee paper top down organization at the time. Everything went by snail mail and paper, communication was slow and lines of communication as well as the necessary and essential corporate approval up the command chain was to say the least primitively slow by todays standards. Hence this short one year time frame for the development of the PC is rather remarkable even the more so because without realizing it we are left with the basics and the standards to this day of the original IBM PC.
At the time that the PC was being planned, all personal computers belonged to a now obsolete category called 8 bit computers. According to one legend the IBM PC almost became such an 8 bit machine. This would of more than severely limited and reduced the capabilities compared to what could have been to become and well as made the growth of the original PC into its family more than difficult and...