The Digital Century

Eighties

1980 dBASE II appears on the market.

1981 IBM introduces the IBM PC with an MS-DOS operating system.

1982 Dr. Barney Clark receives the first artificial heart; a microprocessor controls its functions. Andrew Fluegelman creates the first shareware, PC-Talk. Compact disc players are introduced. Osborne builds the first PC portable. The first IBM PC clones are marketed. Time magazine names the PC "Man of the Year."

1983 Workers lay the Boston/New York/Washington, D.C. fiber-optic link. Apple introduces the $9,995 Lisa, the first computer to use a graphical user interface and a mouse. IBM launches the PC-XT, the first computer with a built-in hard drive, and also introduces the PCjr.

1984 CD-ROM debuts; Apple releases the Macintosh. 2400-baud modems are introduced. Hewlett-Packard markets the LaserJet, the first personal laser printer. Novelist William Gibson coins the term cyberspace.

1985 America Online is founded. Microsoft develops Windows 1.0 for the IBM PC. Bill Gates and Apple CEO John Sculley sign a confidential agreement granting Microsoft the right to use aspects of Apple's graphical interface in its software, while acknowledging the Mac OS as the inspiration for Microsoft Windows. Nintendo arrives in the United States.

1986 Microsoft goes public. The National Science Foundation approves funding for the Internet backbone.

1988 Microsoft releases Windows 2.03, whose overlapping windows resemble the Macintosh's, and Apple files suit; six years and some $10 million later the court will decide in Microsoft's favor. Steve Jobs introduces NeXT. The Internet Worm, a piece of self-replicating software, wriggles through the Internet.

1989 Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web. Xerox files suit against Apple for stealing its graphical interface designs for the Lisa and Macintosh computers; after selling only 60,000 or so Lisas, Apple discontinues the model and buries the remaining units in a landfill in Utah. HDTV appears in Japan.