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Where Did We Come From and Where are We Going?
-- Part 2 of 3

Last week was an overview of what happened with computers from the first digital computer in the 1940s until the end of the 1970s when Apple created the first mass-produced personal computer. What you didn't see was how IBM got into the picture throughout that time. We talked about mainframes and huge machines, but not the fact that IBM had such a profound influence on that end of the industry throughout the decades leading up to the personal computer. That's why when IBM came on to the personal computer scene, people took notice -- especially corporations.

IBM's roots actually started under a different name in the 1880s, making devices like time recorders (such as the punch-clock that marks an employee's arrival time), punch cards and punchcard readers and the first complete school time control system. In fact, the whole story of IBM can be read in Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM, a book written in the early nineties before IBM's reinvention of itself as a service-oriented company. In World War II, all IBM facilities were placed at the disposal of the U.S. government. IBM's product line expanded to include bombsights, rifles and engine parts - in all, more than three dozen major ordnance items. Thomas Watson, Sr., founder of IBM, set a nominal one percent profit on those products and used the money to establish a fund for widows and orphans of IBM war casualties. In the 50s, IBM started making computers, firstly using vacuum tubes, then on to transistors. In fact, on April 7, 1964, IBM introduced the first large "family" of computers to use interchangeable software and peripheral equipment. It was a bold departure from the monolithic, one-size-fits-all mainframe. Fortune magazine dubbed it "IBM's $5 billion gamble." Bold, indeed. IBM makes more things than anyone would imagine. From ATMs to cashier machines, clocks, speech recognition software that dates back to the early 70s; the list is so long, it would leave you in awe. Let's just say there was a reason IBM was synonymous with Big Computing back in the 70s and that is why it was no surprise when they entered the personal computing industry. HOW they did was a remarkable departure from their typical internal innovation.

While most companies designed their own components, IBM was in a hurry to get a product in the retail chain. They anticipated the timing for their entry into the market to be a very small window, afterwhich their chances of success would be greatly diminished. Some people at IBM came up with the concept of using open architecture, rather than proprietary products. Open architecture means you can go to a shop and buy the stuff. Why wouldn't anyone else put their name behind such a product? Because few companies had the financial backing and clout that IBM had. Until IBM came into the PC industry, corporations were far more comfortable relying on their huge mainframes than purchasing PCs for their employees. It's not that IBM made something better; it's that an IBM product meant it was okay for Corporate America to buy in.

So they had the hardware, but how do you make it work? If you have ever lost all of your data on your PC, you know what a computer does when it doesn't know how to read the hard drive in your computer. It's a black screen with arcane numbers and that's it. That's all IBM had at the time. They needed something that would allow people to USE the hardware, not just flick an on/off switch. They called Microsoft, thinking Microsoft made operating systems. They didn't. What Microsoft did at the time was sell people licenses to use programming languages like Assembler, a BASIC interpreter and such. So Microsoft told IBM to call up Gary Kildall, creator of Intergalactic Digital Research. He was the creator of CP/M, an operating system for computers, and had sold 600,000 copies of CP/M by the time IBM came to his door. The only problem was: Gary had left the matter up to his wife, who refused to sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement (basically saying that they would say nothing of IBM's meeting with them to anyone and they, in turn, would show no secrets to IBM, otherwise IBM would get to use the trade secrets if they wished). This was standard practice, but what was supposed to be a casually-signed legal agreement became a point of contention, forcing IBM and their lawyers to stay at the house until all the lawyers could sort everything out. This was the point where Intergalactic Digital Research dropped the ball in the biggest way possible.

IBM went back to Microsoft to see what they could do, as Microsoft was the only other contact they had in that area of the country. Microsoft said they had some ideas and could probably get IBM what they needed. What they did was a question of legality and the height of irony:

Microsoft went to a company called Seattle Computer Products, who had an employee named Tim Patterson. Tim had written an operating system based on the information he found in a CP/M manual. That is, it was Gary Kildall's product in Tim Patterson's creation. Microsoft offered to buy the product from SCP for $50,000 and renamed it PC Dos 1.0. So, instead of getting CP/M from Digital Research, IBM got CP/M from Microsoft, except it wasn't Microsoft's, it was Digital Research's product. Funny, eh?

In three years, IBM expected to ship 500,000 units of their first PC, which was this massive, heavy thing, as compared to an Apple II. They sold over 2 million. What really drove their business was all the developers, people who wrote programs for computers, who flocked to IBM. They knew IBM had the corporations buying their products and where there were corporations, there was opportunity. IBM's first killer-app was quite reminicent of Apple's: a spreadsheet. This one was called Lotus 123. Eventually, companies began to copy IBM's architecture and made IBM-compatible hardware, leaving the door open for Microsoft to license them the same version of DOS that they licensed IBM. It also gave consumers much cheaper prices for PCs and a prolific audience for programmers to sell their software to.

Back in 1973, Xerox had a group of engineers in a research centre called Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC. It was an environment of the minds. In their endeavours, they created a machine that kind of resembles what a PC would look like. There's a keyboard, a computer case and a monitor, except this monitor had an 8.5 x 11 viewing area -- just like your standard printing paper. It had one thing that no other computer had until 1984: a mouse. When you turned the machine on, you could transmit a message to anyone else in the PARC area. It was called electronic mail. You could print out cool looking stuff on the laser printer. You could use your mouse to bring some applications to the fore of the screen. Remember, this was in the 1970s. The only thing is, these machines cost $10,000 in parts, alone. The engineers saw enormous potential for these machines in the consumer industry, but Xerox management wasn't interested. In 1979, they gave a neighbour a tour of the place. Apple was nearby and some of the employees at PARC knew Steve Jobs. When he was shown these products, he said there were three things that were remarkable, but he only focussed on one. The three things were: Object-oriented programming. Very cool, but that wasn't what he was focussed on. There was the network of over 100 computers which was created by those PARC engineers. Neat, but not he was ogling. What changed him, and us, was seeing this GUI - a graphical user interface. When he saw that, he knew there was no turning back. Xerox's management didn't care to license any of these technologies -- they didn't care about them.

So in 1984, after a lot of research and development, Apple brought out the Macintosh. The first PC with a graphic interface. It came built in with a plethora of fonts, such as the PC industry had never seen, a speech emulator, a graphics editor; all very state of the art stuff at the time. In time, the Apple also came with what we now know as WYSIWIG: What You See is What you Get. These days, it's common place to want to print something out and expect it to look just as we see it on the screen. Back in 1984, that wasn't so doable. It took the partnering of Apple with Adobe to make it happen. But the Mac also needed applications.

Enter Microsoft. At the time, they were a dominant player in the PC industry via licensing their purchased copy of CP/M called DOS, but Steve Jobs called upon Bill Gates to help him create applications for the Mac. Bill was happy to do so. Jobs considered IBM the enemy. He had no idea what was to unfold in the coming years, but at the time, Microsoft began to make applications such as a word processor for the Mac. However, Bill Gates saw the Macintosh and thought, "That looks cool. We should do that." It took them 8 years to come up with a rudimentary GUI called Windows 3.0. Apple looked at it and decided it was nothing but thievery. Whereas Xerox had no plans to do anything with its GUI, Macintosh had copyrights on its interface, so they took Microsoft to court. After nearly 6 years of legal quarrelling, the courts decided Microsoft hadn't done anything illegal.

What Apple did with its platform, however, is what sparked the creative juices of so many out there: They created applications based on creating visually pleasing projects, helped by their use of WYSIWIG technology. With desktop publications and graphic editors, the likes of which had NO competition on the IBM side of computers, became the source of so much fanaticism for Mac users. Apple had spreadsheets and word processors already. In fact, with the Apple II came the first ever spreadsheet. But no one on the IBM side could say there was something they had that the Mac didn't -- except games, and lots of them. At the same time, IBM went on with its own operating system, OS/2. Originally partnering with Microsoft, they parted ways before IBM finished its product. What came of it was a very strong graphic interface that didn't quite resemble Apple's but was extremely versatile and solid. So solid that to this day, OS/2 is still used by a great many bank institutions, among many other companies. Microsoft and IBM's alliance had withered, leaving IBM in a state of uncertainty. This company, who had previously dominated everything they became involved in, was in a situation it was not used to.

With the end of the 80s came the certainty that the future of personal computers -- whichever one you chose to use -- was definitely in the graphic interface. In the 90s came a whole lot more, and not just from one company. Next week, we'll see what happens when you have this many tools given to this many people who have so many ideas. Digital convergence becomes the mantra of many.

If you have any comments, questions or concerns about this newsletter, feel free to e-mail me at sean@beggs.ca.