Some of the plan’s main points were as follows: IBM PC motherboard with 5 expansion slots by German CC BY-SA 3.0 The group also delivered a business plan and it was that which convinced the committee to go further. The first wire-wrapped prototype was completed in less time than that and presented to the CMC in August 1980. They were tasked to develop a prototype in 30 days. The group consisted of a dozen employees in Boca Raton, Florida, led by Bill Sydnes, who’d had managed the rapid, 90-day development of the 5110. But instead, the committee allowed Lowe to form an independent group within IBM to develop IBM’s own PC from scratch. In 1980, Lowe discussed a proposal with IBM President John Opel, CEO Frank Cary and the Corporate Management Committee (CMC) to base a PC on the Atari 800. And so IBM began to establish what amounted to little companies within IBM, called Independent Business Units (IBUs). But even with the 5100 and other minicomputers, they’d failed to dominate the market giving way to Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) and Data General. The IBM 5110 had gone from conception to production in only 90 days.
IBM’s approach had long been a cradle-to-grave bundling of engineering, sales, installation, software design, and maintenance.ĭespite IBM’s reputation for moving slowly, bursts of rapid development were possible in the company. This was very much in contrast to the way IBM did things.
Consulting computer dealers about PCs, Lowe was told that store employees would have to be able to make repairs and that it must be made of standard parts. Much of the push for a personal computer came from executive Bill Lowe and other IBMers who had been working on the IBM 51, IBM’s minicomputers that fit on a desktop but were too pricey for consumers. With even more built-in barriers which we cover below, how did the slow-moving elephant make this happen?ĭoing It In A Non-IBM Way IBM 5120 by Marcin Wichary CC BY 2.0 Decisions were made through committees, resulting in such a slow decision process that one employee observed, “that it would take at least nine months to ship an empty box.” And one analyst famously said, “IBM bringing out a personal computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance.”Īnd yet, in just a few short years, IBM PCs dominated the personal computer market and the majority of today’s desktops can trace their design back to the first IBM PC. And they’d have to come up with something fast.įast, however, wasn’t something people felt IBM could do. But sales in 1979 in the personal computer market were $150 million and were projected to increase 40% in 1980. In the 1960s and 1970s, the room-filling mainframe was the leading computing platform and the IBM System/360 held a strong position in that field. The Slow Moving Elephant IBM System/360 Model 30 mainframe by Dave Ross CC BY 2.0 But now, unless your desktop machine is a Mac, you probably own a computer that owes its basic design to the first IBM PC. Those of us who were around at the time cherished one of those early non-IBM computers, and as the IBM PC came out, either respected it, looked down on it, or did both. And yet within a few years, the IBM PC would be the dominant player. But IBM, whose name was synonymous with computers, was nowhere to be seen. It was the dawn of the personal computer age, a time when Apple IIs, Tandy TRS-80s, Commodore PETs, the Atari 400 and 800, and others had made significant inroads into schools and people’s homes.