Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve cameray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Billett, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting acrossing me as always a senior writer, Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: the heavens, Mrs Sakamoto, you're beautiful. You know. I'm really
Speaker 1: glad that Jonathan is decided to switch to song quotes
Speaker 1: instead of movie quotes, because with three podcasts on IBM
Speaker 1: and yes we're stopping at three, he probably would have
Speaker 1: been tempted to quote Tron five or six more times,
Speaker 1: or war games game would have gone back and forth
Speaker 1: between those two. It was possibly hackers. That's another good one.
Speaker 1: It was just funny because I didn't realize that you
Speaker 1: had quoted Tron so frequently into like, like you quote
Speaker 1: a Tron an episode blah blah blah. Also in the
Speaker 1: in six episodes later you did again, and in three
Speaker 1: episodes later again you really liked Tron. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he listed forty one total quotes and and maybe three
Speaker 1: or four of them were from Tron. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: not on purpose because I didn't keep track of them.
Speaker 1: Was a recap in case you're listening, in case you're
Speaker 1: just tuning in. IBM was founded and it did a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. Yes, and we decided to do three
Speaker 1: podcasts on IBM because someone we we've had people ask
Speaker 1: us about the history of of IBM. We we talked
Speaker 1: about the history of different commuting companies because uh tech
Speaker 1: stuff isn't really about reviews, it's about technology and people. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh so we're sort of fascinated by how these
Speaker 1: machines got into our lives, and we thought, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's do a podcast at IBM. And then we
Speaker 1: started researching it and found out you can't do a
Speaker 1: podcast about IBM unless it's several hours long writ and
Speaker 1: we just don't have that kind of stamina. Uh So,
Speaker 1: although some of you kind of get peeved with us
Speaker 1: when we do more than one podcast that at time
Speaker 1: on stuff, we decided to do allur research at one time,
Speaker 1: and thank you for sticking with us, because we've finally
Speaker 1: gotten too. They've done so much innovation up into the
Speaker 1: point we're reaching today. I mean, they've they've done mainframe computers.
Speaker 1: They've they've introduced programming languages, they've helped the space program,
Speaker 1: they've helped the military, they've introduced this electric typewriter. Yeah yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean there were a business machine company, so UM
Speaker 1: they were very interested in all kinds of processing and
Speaker 1: and helping people do work. Yes, So at this point
Speaker 1: they're really going to change the work landscape because they're
Speaker 1: going to introduce a machine that will affect everyone's productivity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're we've we've covered IBMS history all the way
Speaker 1: up to nineteen eighty one so far, stopping well, stopping
Speaker 1: at nineteen eighty right where we're going to pick up,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind that the companies that formed IBM
Speaker 1: actually date all the way back to the eighteen the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds. Right at the point at which IBM
Speaker 1: was founded. There were three companies that were brought together
Speaker 1: as a business venture. There was m Herman hollerwas Tabulating
Speaker 1: Machine company, which is really what's left of IBM today
Speaker 1: is a computing company. There was also a time recording company,
Speaker 1: which the IBM divested itself, UM and UH Computing Scale
Speaker 1: Company Computing divested itself of and all and and those
Speaker 1: other two companies, the companies that they sold those branches
Speaker 1: are all surviving today. So all three were successful. So
Speaker 1: they were talking. When you're talking about this a company
Speaker 1: that's nearly a century old, of course you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff to cover. Well. In one they
Speaker 1: started to forge new ground. Now not entirely new in
Speaker 1: the sense that there were other competitors on the market
Speaker 1: in but it was the personal computer era. IBM at
Speaker 1: this point had not entered the personal computer era. Its
Speaker 1: focus was, as Chris was saying, on businesses. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: talked about the system's stroke three sixty and three seventy,
Speaker 1: which were uh innovative because they weren't just the giant
Speaker 1: room filling mainframes. They were modular computers that could be
Speaker 1: added onto and part of that equipment including included terminals
Speaker 1: UM and before UH, in the in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: there were machines that basically had lights and switches, and
Speaker 1: you know, before the displays came on the scene, you
Speaker 1: couldn't really figure out specifically what you were doing. We
Speaker 1: we talked about this in a previous episode a long
Speaker 1: time ago, about programming, and they would take a bunch
Speaker 1: of punched cards and bring them into the machine, and
Speaker 1: you couldn't really tell whether the machine was gonna do
Speaker 1: what you wanted it to do until it read through
Speaker 1: all the punch cards and then the lights, the appropriate
Speaker 1: lights flickered on or off, right, and you would then
Speaker 1: know whether or not the program you had designed worked.
Speaker 1: And if it didn't work, you had to go back
Speaker 1: and go card by card and figure out where the
Speaker 1: bugs were in that system and then reprogrammed. And this
Speaker 1: just took a long time. So, um, you know, there
Speaker 1: were and and this isn't to say that IBM is
Speaker 1: the only company and innovating in the computer space, um
Speaker 1: during this time, but these are these systems were not
Speaker 1: you know, they had terminals at this point and they
Speaker 1: were starting to become uh more useful, but they were
Speaker 1: using a central computer CPU rather than you know what
Speaker 1: we think of today. Right, All these different terminals were
Speaker 1: tapping into the same centralized brain, if you if you will,
Speaker 1: and so you can think of it as like UM
Speaker 1: time sharing. Right. Often you would have time sharing systems
Speaker 1: where a terminal would be able to access the computer's
Speaker 1: processing power. But the more terminals you add, the more
Speaker 1: you had to divide that up. You couldn't give everyone
Speaker 1: unfettered access all the time. Instead, you would have a
Speaker 1: system that would schedule when you could access the core. Now,
Speaker 1: this would go really fast, so to most people would
Speaker 1: seem instantaneous unless there was an unusually heavy load on
Speaker 1: the system. Um. But in effect, you've got someone controlling
Speaker 1: all the traffic. Well, let's let's talk about personal computers. Now.
Speaker 1: We started seeing the personal computer market developed in the seventies. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it was with computers like the al Tear, the Altar. Now,
Speaker 1: the al Tear didn't have a monitor, um, but the
Speaker 1: TRS eight did. Yeah, that was Tandy's machine. So many
Speaker 1: of us remember that had used the floppy disks that
Speaker 1: we talked about in the last episode, which were an
Speaker 1: IBM innovation. You had. You had an upstart computer company
Speaker 1: called Apple that was starting to Yeah, I know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to believe that a computer company we called Apple.
Speaker 1: And then there's another computing company you might have heard
Speaker 1: of that came out with the Atrip computers. Um, you
Speaker 1: had the Common War sixty four coming out in the
Speaker 1: early the late seven these early eighties. Um, you had
Speaker 1: all these different companies getting into it. Well, IBM, here
Speaker 1: you have this this old technology company that has an
Speaker 1: incredible history with computing. They get into the market in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, they introduced the fifty one fifty personal computer. I. Yes. Now,
Speaker 1: if you wonder why we call them PCs or personal computers,
Speaker 1: this is why. Yeah, it's um. They they were using
Speaker 1: off the shelf components to build this machine. They used
Speaker 1: Intel's eight to sixteen bit eight eight eight processor Classic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were looking at that there. They were also looking
Speaker 1: at the possibility of using a Motorola processor or the
Speaker 1: eight six from Intel. But they determined that those processors
Speaker 1: were actually too powerful for a personal computer. It wasn't
Speaker 1: necessary to have that kind of processing power. That's kind
Speaker 1: of funny in it. Yeah. Well, you still to this
Speaker 1: day have companies that will say, you know what, we
Speaker 1: don't need to put that powerful processor into this machine.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not just because you know, it's not that
Speaker 1: they're trying to to mess with the consumer. It's because
Speaker 1: they'll say, well, if we put in this powerful chip,
Speaker 1: that means we have to figure out how do we
Speaker 1: keep it cool? Right right? Well, that's that's evident in laptops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's and that's also evident in lower cost machine. If
Speaker 1: you don't held devices exactly exactly what I mean. If
Speaker 1: you go to a computer store and you go, hey,
Speaker 1: that one's only three you know I could get that
Speaker 1: computer and I have a computer for three hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: It's like, yes, you will, and it will have a slower,
Speaker 1: less powerful processor. So when they were looking at the
Speaker 1: who would provide the operating system for this machine? They
Speaker 1: first went to a company called Digital Research and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys want to give us the operating system or
Speaker 1: you want to partner with us and provide the operating
Speaker 1: system for a new personal computer. And they said no.
Speaker 1: So they went to a different upstart computer company, a
Speaker 1: company that started right around the same time as Apple
Speaker 1: in fact, and had co founders who were also shared
Speaker 1: quite a few uh qualities with the Apple co founders. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, I think we may have
Speaker 1: done a podcast on these guys. We may have. Actually,
Speaker 1: memory does there is a bell ringing somewhere. That might
Speaker 1: be a fire drill or an angels getting its wings.
Speaker 1: It could be Actually you're probably thinking of the disc
Speaker 1: operating system. Yes, Microsoft disc operating system. Now Microsoft got
Speaker 1: this operating system originally from Seattle Computer Products, and uh,
Speaker 1: Seattle Computer Products had an operating system called q DOSS,
Speaker 1: which do you know the at least the semi apocryphal
Speaker 1: name that q DOSS actually refers to this. This may
Speaker 1: or may not be true. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: that people hold as true, but there's no actual proof.
Speaker 1: Q DOSS stands for Quick and Dirty Operating System. So
Speaker 1: you've got this, uh, and this was a line command
Speaker 1: operating system, right, you would type commands into your on
Speaker 1: your keyboard and look at the display to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, to to actually execute stuff. Um. So Microsoft
Speaker 1: buys q DOSS and then adapts it into an operating
Speaker 1: system they called PC doss, and then later they renamed
Speaker 1: it MS DOSS for Microsoft. Oh so let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the fifty one fifty. This was not
Speaker 1: a lightweight machine. It weighed approximately twenty five pounds. Well,
Speaker 1: it's lighter than the system slash three sixty. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't actually know that. I'm just taking an
Speaker 1: educated guess. You didn't need a hand truck to move
Speaker 1: it into your office, so there there was a benefit there, right,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't exactly you know, it wasn't a portable system. Um,
Speaker 1: the processor speed on the fifty one fifty was four
Speaker 1: point seven seven mega hurts. That's mega hurts. Guys. You
Speaker 1: know you have gigga hurts processors like my my phone
Speaker 1: has a giga hurts processor. So that's you know, my
Speaker 1: phone is way more powerful as far as the processing
Speaker 1: standpoint is concerned than the old of course, you know
Speaker 1: that was so the CPU had about twenty nine thousand
Speaker 1: transistors on it would sounds like a lot, except now
Speaker 1: we're approaching for the consumer market. We are now approaching
Speaker 1: one billion transistors on a single processor. Yes, there's a
Speaker 1: lot more than twenty nine thousand. That also shows the
Speaker 1: the whole concept of exponential growth with Moore's law. We've
Speaker 1: talked about it a lot, and you know it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine what that really means until you think, all right,
Speaker 1: we're talking two thousand eleven now and we're approaching a
Speaker 1: billion transistors back there were just twenty nine thousand. That's
Speaker 1: that's crazy. Um, the you could get the system for
Speaker 1: if you wanted a bare bones system, you could have
Speaker 1: sixteen kilobytes of RAM. It was expandable up to two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six kilobytes again kilobytes. Uh. Then you
Speaker 1: had fortes of ROM read only memory. Uh, and you
Speaker 1: could have up to two five and a quarter inch
Speaker 1: disk drives. Man, do you remember the five and a
Speaker 1: quarter inch discs? You do? I'm sure? All right. So guys,
Speaker 1: if you are um, if you're one of our younger listeners,
Speaker 1: we got a lot of you out there, five and
Speaker 1: a quarter inch discs. You may have seen these in
Speaker 1: books or on television, or on movies, or or or
Speaker 1: maybe you've stumbled across an ancient computer burial mound and
Speaker 1: you've found some. But the five and a quarter inch
Speaker 1: discs were these black uh disksmayed out of a very
Speaker 1: thin plastic. Some people thought that's why they were called
Speaker 1: floppy disks, because you could actually fold them up. And
Speaker 1: that I even remember when I was a kid people
Speaker 1: mistakenly identifying three and a half inch discs as hard
Speaker 1: disks because they were made a little a hard plastic
Speaker 1: the outside. That's not that's not true. Inside sloppy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you had this very flexible material inside. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to mess with them too much because they
Speaker 1: could be easily damaged. But that was the storage media
Speaker 1: these UH devices used. The original UH did not have
Speaker 1: a hard drive, It only had the disk drives UM
Speaker 1: and had a monochromatic display. That means, of course, that
Speaker 1: the computer screen could only show one color, which was
Speaker 1: not the you know Apple too. We went with green.
Speaker 1: It was like a dark green. The IBM was more
Speaker 1: of a white. UH. I remember that being thrown by
Speaker 1: that when I got when we got our first IBM computer,
Speaker 1: it also could come UH. There was an option to
Speaker 1: get a cassette drive with it, so you would use
Speaker 1: a cassette to store information as opposed to the floppy drive. Now,
Speaker 1: the cheapest one of the fifties, the one with the
Speaker 1: sixteen kilobytes around, cost about one thousand, five hundred sixty
Speaker 1: five bucks, which today would be around three thousand, seven
Speaker 1: four dollars. Little pricing, little pricing. The if you wanted
Speaker 1: to trick it out, like you wanted to get the
Speaker 1: glow and the dark stuff and you know the hemp
Speaker 1: and base yeah himmy in there. No. No, if you
Speaker 1: wanted the two hundred six kilobytes a RAM, you've got
Speaker 1: the two disk drives, you've got all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: then you're talking six thousand dollars, which today is over
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand bucks. Yes for a computer. Fourteen dollars for
Speaker 1: a computer. And keep in mind you can't climb into
Speaker 1: this computer and have it drive you places, because I
Speaker 1: think for teen dollars that should be able to transport
Speaker 1: you beyond in your mind. Yeah. Also, I note about
Speaker 1: about UM A lot of people not really sold on
Speaker 1: it being Van Halen's best album. Nice I can't drive
Speaker 1: fifty five um, actually I can't drive at all. So
Speaker 1: the the software that you can get back in those
Speaker 1: days included stuff like the Visit couc spreadsheet. I remember
Speaker 1: Visit and easy Writer one point zero easy Writer not
Speaker 1: Writer UM and different. And also there was an incredible game,
Speaker 1: Really Adventure, Yes Microsoft Adventure. I was back in the
Speaker 1: old fifty days. So yeah, you could pick these up
Speaker 1: in um sears or computer Land computer stores at the time.
Speaker 1: That's where those were the outlets that were carrying it.
Speaker 1: And this created a PC compatible market. When you if
Speaker 1: you ever heard the term PC compatible or IBM compatible,
Speaker 1: let's talk about other companies that made computers that ran
Speaker 1: on using the same components as the IBM computers, which
Speaker 1: meant that you could run the same programs that IBM
Speaker 1: computers could run. Yes, and this has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with the market share that Windows has today, yes
Speaker 1: versus Apple's market share. Yeah, you might ask yourself, why
Speaker 1: is it that when you walk into a typical office
Speaker 1: you'll see more often than not, you'll see Windows machines
Speaker 1: everywhere and only a few max, if any max at all.
Speaker 1: I would argue there are two major reasons. Pray, hit
Speaker 1: me up with those reasons you um. First of all
Speaker 1: is that IBM was willing to license this architecture to
Speaker 1: other companies. So there were clones. Yes, you could send
Speaker 1: them in if you like. Thus the IBM compatibles right exactly.
Speaker 1: And Apple specifically did not want to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they experimented it with it for a while when Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was kind of pushed out of the company and
Speaker 1: it did not go well. And when Steve Jobs came
Speaker 1: back that ended too to sweet. And if you want
Speaker 1: to write in and argue that you may, because there
Speaker 1: are people who will argue that it was starting to
Speaker 1: take off with but yeah, I mean it wasn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't an immediate change, and it was way way after
Speaker 1: this point. This point is where IBM had established itself
Speaker 1: in the marketplace. But the other thing that I think
Speaker 1: significantly contributed to this is marketing because IBM, as we
Speaker 1: have touched on in two podcasts already, is to some degree,
Speaker 1: well it's in their name business machines. They're synonymous with
Speaker 1: computing power for companies. Yes, they had they had a
Speaker 1: longstanding reputation as being the company to go to for
Speaker 1: your technology needs if you were a business and people,
Speaker 1: even though they were available at sears and other outlets,
Speaker 1: people didn't buy these machines for their homes for the
Speaker 1: most part. Now small business owners started to pick them up.
Speaker 1: Business owners were buying them, small business owners, larger business owners.
Speaker 1: Uh they were. They were gobbling them up to use
Speaker 1: at work for work stuff. You didn't have people buying
Speaker 1: gaming PCs because they're dining games out there. That yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were buying games, you were buying them honestly
Speaker 1: the very early days of computer games. Can you remember
Speaker 1: these days where you would go into a computer store
Speaker 1: and there'd be a bulletin board, a cork bulletin board,
Speaker 1: and up there you would see penned their little plastic
Speaker 1: bags that would contain a disk and a sheet of
Speaker 1: instructions and that was what computer games looked like on
Speaker 1: the earliest days. Yeah, I remember those days. That was
Speaker 1: before you know you really we could all do a
Speaker 1: discussion about the how how computer games evolved. From a
Speaker 1: marketing standpoint, it would actually be pretty fascinating because, like
Speaker 1: I said, those early days, you would go in and
Speaker 1: it would be it might even be a local programmer
Speaker 1: who built that game and then just copied it onto
Speaker 1: as many discs as he or she could, and then contacted,
Speaker 1: say a hobby store, and sold them through the hobby store.
Speaker 1: Later on you would get into the more the larger
Speaker 1: distributing models of companies forming around creating video games. I
Speaker 1: think Richard Garriott was one of the first people to
Speaker 1: really demand that his games be packaged in a box
Speaker 1: as opposed to in a in a ziplock bag. But
Speaker 1: getting back to the the the IBM, the personal computer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really did well in small business and large business markets.
Speaker 1: It started to pick up in the home market as
Speaker 1: well for more affluent people obviously, because you know, asking
Speaker 1: folks to to drop dollars on a computer, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of money, even if even if you were just
Speaker 1: saying fifteen hundred dollars today, without taking inflation into account,
Speaker 1: that's still a lot of money to ask for a computer. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: people people complain about that all the time, about computers
Speaker 1: that cost more than a thousand dollars. I see that
Speaker 1: all the time. Well, that's just too much. Well, and
Speaker 1: it's why, it's why some people think of Apple as
Speaker 1: being a boutique computer system as opposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: a personal computer that you would normally think of. People
Speaker 1: think of Apples being almost a laitist because the products
Speaker 1: are more expensive. Although you could also just just as
Speaker 1: easily argue, well, you're paying for quality. You know, you're
Speaker 1: paying for the quality of the parts in there. And
Speaker 1: because the computer market on the PC side is more
Speaker 1: piecemeal that you can put together computers based upon whatever
Speaker 1: off the shelf components are out there that you also
Speaker 1: are you know, just just as the parts come from
Speaker 1: all different parts of the world. Uh, the quality spans
Speaker 1: the entire spectrum between really awesome computers and really really
Speaker 1: kind of not so awesome, crappy machines. Well, something that
Speaker 1: was there was something holding it back. What's that? That
Speaker 1: would be the operating system you were just talking about,
Speaker 1: Because doss is not necessarily user friendly. It can be
Speaker 1: willing to learn. I actually I was. I was a
Speaker 1: Doss fanboy, and that I had bothered to learn all
Speaker 1: the commands, and it was it came naturally to me.
Speaker 1: Granted I was learning TOSS in that time of my
Speaker 1: life when I was when that the language centers in
Speaker 1: my brain were really receptive to stuff. If I were
Speaker 1: trying to learn it today, I'd be like, what the
Speaker 1: heck this is? Give me, give me a graphic user interface.
Speaker 1: This I can't know. Uh, the around the room right right,
Speaker 1: or I throw the machine across the floor. I mean
Speaker 1: I really six on one, half a dozen on the other. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the you know later on in the eighties and the
Speaker 1: early in the early mid eighties. Um, now, and then
Speaker 1: we gonna just give a year, I would say, I
Speaker 1: would say eighty four. But yeah, I mean the the
Speaker 1: PC was out for a couple of years before Apple's
Speaker 1: Macintosh at the scene, before the Amiga hit the scene. Uh,
Speaker 1: Commodores Amiga, before uh the Atar e s T hit
Speaker 1: the scene. With graphical user interfaces. Yeah, the Xerox had
Speaker 1: been working on in the graphic interface. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: back in the seventies actually before but they weren't on
Speaker 1: these devices. No, the personal computers were all these line
Speaker 1: based UM. You would actually type commands in to make
Speaker 1: things happen U. Yeah. IBM released the personal computer XT,
Speaker 1: which provided more memory. It also introduced the dual sided
Speaker 1: diskette drive UM and it had a fixed desk drive
Speaker 1: which we now really referred to as a hard drive UM.
Speaker 1: And they also introduced a color printer. And personally in
Speaker 1: the business side, IBM was also uh doing things with
Speaker 1: personal banking machines and robotic systems. They were working they
Speaker 1: While we're talking about personal computers, keep in mind IBM
Speaker 1: on the on on their research and development side, they
Speaker 1: haven't stopped. They're still pouring lots of money and time
Speaker 1: and effort into research and development. They're coming up with
Speaker 1: really cool stuff. We're mostly focusing on the personal computers
Speaker 1: for this podcast, but that doesn't mean that that was
Speaker 1: where IBM's entire focus lay at the time. Yeah. Definitely
Speaker 1: if you're interested in learning all the stuff that they
Speaker 1: were doing as time and it is rather fascinating. If
Speaker 1: you like computer history, the Computer History Museum and IBMS
Speaker 1: archives are great free places to look for information on that.
Speaker 1: And we're we're skimming over some of that except for
Speaker 1: the some of the really interesting tidbits on company culture
Speaker 1: and things. But I'm glad that you left one of
Speaker 1: the things off once that happened in Remember we were
Speaker 1: just talking a minute ago about how personal computers were
Speaker 1: mostly for businesses at this point. UM I would argue
Speaker 1: maybe except for really hardcore computer enthusiasts, and we had
Speaker 1: quite a few of those from dating from the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies into the eighties. They came out with IBM
Speaker 1: decided to come out with a computer that was really
Speaker 1: designed to be an affordable in home computer, and they
Speaker 1: called it the PC Junior, also known as you remember
Speaker 1: its nickname, the Peanut, and they had this is a
Speaker 1: period of time, and this enabled Apple to get a
Speaker 1: foothold with some people. This is a period of time
Speaker 1: when IBM the coolest commercials. I remember this growing up,
Speaker 1: where they had the Charlie Chaplin impersonator person talking about
Speaker 1: the PC and the PC Junior and how easy the
Speaker 1: PC Junior was to to use. And now I remember
Speaker 1: it had a little chicklate keyboard, which was kind of
Speaker 1: common on the less expensive computers where had the little
Speaker 1: rubberized keys the thing bombed, but not again people right
Speaker 1: in and say, no, it didn't. It's they sold a
Speaker 1: lot of them, but it just wasn't what the PC was.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was a good entry into the
Speaker 1: home market, I would say, but not what you would
Speaker 1: think of as a really successful product launch now and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's flaws were obvious enough to a lot
Speaker 1: of people that people ridiculed. It's sort of like Microsoft, Bob.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about for a second. This is a
Speaker 1: big year in personal computing in general. Right, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about van Halen Halen albums again. Though, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about van Halen albums again. Although four I wore
Speaker 1: it down, might as well jump um which ironically before Yeah,
Speaker 1: so eight four rolls around and then um, you may
Speaker 1: have seen the infamous commercial that aired during the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl in four, the Apple commercial that was for the
Speaker 1: Apple mac computer Macintosh. I should say it was the
Speaker 1: full name Apple Macintosh. Yes, we think of it now
Speaker 1: as the Mac Classic, the all in one, little black
Speaker 1: and white box. UM that used the motor rolla processor.
Speaker 1: Um and uh, actually you know what, we I think
Speaker 1: we've left that out because in two IBM actually took
Speaker 1: a stake and Intel, Um, this is where it gets
Speaker 1: they start sort of crossing over because um, the Macintosh
Speaker 1: they were for their marketing, they were pointing out that
Speaker 1: it was a it had a g u I graphical
Speaker 1: user interface, gooey. Um. It was easier to use, they
Speaker 1: were saying, than the IBM PC because look at all
Speaker 1: these books that Charlie Chaplin wants you to read. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: and their commercial made it look like IBM was this
Speaker 1: Orwellian big brother organization and what they were doing huge,
Speaker 1: They were huge company. Yeah. They were playing up the
Speaker 1: fact that IBM had this this hundred year old history,
Speaker 1: nearly a hundred year old history exact, that it was
Speaker 1: permeating all aspects of business, that they were dominating, and
Speaker 1: that they were oppressive. They were essentially turning IBM's reputation
Speaker 1: against IBM exactly and said, what about the rebels, what
Speaker 1: about the people who don't want to conform, who don't
Speaker 1: want to just march in step with everyone else, here's
Speaker 1: the machine for you, Apple Macintosh. Ironically, now those people
Speaker 1: are using. If you're marketing to that group of people,
Speaker 1: you're talking Linux. Yeah. Yeah, Because because Apple ended up saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know that Orwellian thing. We do it way better
Speaker 1: than IBM never did. UM. It's little commentary from Jonathan
Speaker 1: well And and not completely unwarranted because Apple is known
Speaker 1: for having closed off system. Again, their advantages and disadvantage.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this countless times in the podcast. Their
Speaker 1: advantages and disadvantages to both options. But so in this
Speaker 1: case it's sort of ironic. Yeah, and so that really
Speaker 1: stepped up this, uh, this competition between IBM and and Apple.
Speaker 1: IBM nine four introduced the PC a T, which the
Speaker 1: that was the most powerful personal computer at that time.
Speaker 1: And also they started to introduce the PC network, which
Speaker 1: was a system that allowed customers to link up to
Speaker 1: seventy two PCs together. So this is the precursor really
Speaker 1: of a local area network UM. And it showed that
Speaker 1: IBM was already thinking ahead, excuse me, ahead to these
Speaker 1: systems that would allow consumers and and businesses really to
Speaker 1: create a collaborative environment. Just as a historical note, of course,
Speaker 1: darpnet already exists at this point. It had been created
Speaker 1: for government use back in the UH the sixties and
Speaker 1: seventies really UM, and then of course for educational institutions.
Speaker 1: But again, it's not something that the average person uses
Speaker 1: like it like he or she does today. Computer networks
Speaker 1: were pretty rare. You would usually only find them in
Speaker 1: proprietary systems, so you would have this and and a
Speaker 1: lot of them were more like time sharing systems where
Speaker 1: you had terminals that tapped into a centralized computer. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a true network in the sense of each each
Speaker 1: outlet is its own computer that then communicates with other
Speaker 1: computers on the system. Right. Ethernet was invented in the
Speaker 1: early seventies, but you wouldn't find an Ethernet port on
Speaker 1: an IBM PC introduced in just those technologies took a
Speaker 1: while to come together. Right, So do you do you
Speaker 1: happen to know what kind of processor the A T
Speaker 1: had on it? No, I don't. The eighty two eight
Speaker 1: six the to A A D six processor from Intel.
Speaker 1: It had it actually up the speed. Remember the old
Speaker 1: speed of the PC was four of the processor speed
Speaker 1: was four point seven seven Mega hurts. The two six
Speaker 1: boosted that to six mega hurts, so it was a
Speaker 1: more powerful processor. The two six was also the first
Speaker 1: IBM machine that my family owned, IBM two eight six
Speaker 1: um and now we can we can start skipping ahead
Speaker 1: some we we've spent a good amount of time. Do
Speaker 1: you have something specific you wanted to point out? Um,
Speaker 1: Since since we've been focusing primarily on the computers, I
Speaker 1: wanted to note a couple again kind of interesting things.
Speaker 1: In eighty three, um IBM was using scandaling tunneling microscopy, yes,
Speaker 1: for to create three dimensional images of on of the
Speaker 1: atomic surfaces of gold, silicon, nickel, and other solids. Which
Speaker 1: is just an interesting note that they were working on
Speaker 1: this kind of technology, but at that scale. Again, these
Speaker 1: are the laying the foundations for tiny little processors for
Speaker 1: stuff on the nano scale. Again, this is gonna happen.
Speaker 1: They're also gonna play with development that scanning tunneling microscope
Speaker 1: in just a few years to do something clever. So
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in just a second. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in night they IBM introduces the first computer running on
Speaker 1: the three six processor, and in nine they are the
Speaker 1: first computer company to use intels for eighty six processor,
Speaker 1: although it would be a couple of years before that
Speaker 1: would hit the actual consumer market. They introduced Prodigy. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, wait eighty nine Because I was going
Speaker 1: to uh, I saw one other thing I wanted to mention.
Speaker 1: Oh all right, well, m that's a storage thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you notice that they there's so much information at
Speaker 1: this point I was skiing skimming to be honest, so
Speaker 1: much per year. Yeah, that's the thing. IBM a so
Speaker 1: big by the late eighties that it has multiple divisions,
Speaker 1: it's got presents worldwide. They got scientists, uh you know,
Speaker 1: packed in like Sartain may have R and D centers
Speaker 1: all over the place. Well, some some scientists and engineers
Speaker 1: were able to set a new world record in magnetic storage.
Speaker 1: They were able to store a billion bits of information
Speaker 1: on a single square inch of disk space a gig
Speaker 1: a bit. That's pretty impressive. And I'm sure that amount
Speaker 1: of storage costs you a lot of money compared to
Speaker 1: how much it would cost now. All right, So getting
Speaker 1: back to Prodigy, Prodigy was essentially an online service provider
Speaker 1: type of service. You could log in and go shopping
Speaker 1: on it, or you could read the latest news. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of a precursor to the Internet, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so OSP we were talking about, uh, we talked
Speaker 1: about online service providers a long time ago. So things
Speaker 1: like all L and Prodigy both kind of had had
Speaker 1: their their roots in that, but in ninety they also
Speaker 1: there was also an interesting development. We you talked about
Speaker 1: the scanning tunneling microscope. That's when scientists began to use
Speaker 1: it to manipulate individual atoms. Yes, so you work at IBM.
Speaker 1: You're a why this is a mena? This is just
Speaker 1: hypothetical case. Hypothetically, I got it. It's you're a scientist,
Speaker 1: you work for IBM. You have just figured out how
Speaker 1: to manipulate individual atoms. What do you do with that knowledge?
Speaker 1: I don't know? And you know, create world peace, solve
Speaker 1: the hunger problem. That's so wrong. That's when I use
Speaker 1: the scanning scanning tunneling microscope to arrange atoms so that
Speaker 1: they spell out the letters IBM on the atomic scale. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds like this sounds like I've been kind of
Speaker 1: eat this. This was actually pretty cool. And there are
Speaker 1: pictures We've talked about this before on the podcast, but
Speaker 1: there are pictures on the web of IBM spelled out
Speaker 1: in individual atoms and they were all pushed around by
Speaker 1: a scanning tunneling microscope. Yes, and the nineties were actually
Speaker 1: sort of a difficult period for IBM, and in several ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they tried to introduce the PC radio in nine, which
Speaker 1: was a battery powered mobile computer and it could actually
Speaker 1: transmit data via radio or telephone or cellular communication. The
Speaker 1: idea here was that IBM was trying to make computers
Speaker 1: that people who had to go out on service calls
Speaker 1: or who had to be remote from a centralized location
Speaker 1: could still use a computer system without having to just
Speaker 1: you know, save up all the data and wait till
Speaker 1: you got back to the office to to type everything up.
Speaker 1: But you know that it was again a precursor to
Speaker 1: the mobile computers of today, but didn't do incredibly well.
Speaker 1: They also introduced the PS two L forty s X.
Speaker 1: Do you know what that was the very first I
Speaker 1: b M laptop. Oh, it was enormous, Yes it was.
Speaker 1: It was technically portable, so was the first Apple. All right,
Speaker 1: that was technically portable, but um but yeah, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: recommend carrying it for very long. Uh. And it could
Speaker 1: hold a head up to eighteen megabytes of memory and
Speaker 1: an internal modem that worked at and a facts modem
Speaker 1: that could go up to um. So it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was meant for people who did a lot of
Speaker 1: business travel UH and needed to have a computer with
Speaker 1: them when they traveled around, the same reason why we
Speaker 1: have laptops today. Really, it's just that it was a
Speaker 1: little bulkier back then, little boxier, a little heavier, significantly heavier.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, but um yeah, there are there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things going on here too, UM OS two. Yes,
Speaker 1: OS two, We didn't really we didn't really talking about
Speaker 1: the O s because that was more of a Most
Speaker 1: people operated with the DOSS system. You could get UH
Speaker 1: business operating system, the same one that was running on
Speaker 1: IBM's business computers, but those tended to be more expensive
Speaker 1: and a lot of people just opted for the less
Speaker 1: expensive MS DOSS version. So in addition to OS two UM,
Speaker 1: IBM is also working in a partnership with Motorola to
Speaker 1: create reduced instruction set computing chips the power PC chips
Speaker 1: which were in Macintosh computers in the late UH in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, UM which replaced the Motorola sixty eight
Speaker 1: thousand series ships that used in the in the eighties
Speaker 1: and early nineties. You know, Intel, even though they had
Speaker 1: a stake in Intel for a while, they were using
Speaker 1: the complex and instruction set computing, so you have their
Speaker 1: competing on computing with Intel and the on the processors
Speaker 1: they're competing and operating systems with Windows. This is a
Speaker 1: difficult time for IBM because they're having struggles where you know,
Speaker 1: they've they've been the dominant player in the market for
Speaker 1: so long, but Intel came along, Apples come along, and
Speaker 1: Microsoft has come along, and these guys are not going away.
Speaker 1: And you've got all these computers now that are out
Speaker 1: there that are based on this IBM architecture. So IBM
Speaker 1: branded computers aren't necessarily the top dog anymore. Right, You've
Speaker 1: got all the you've got all these different options. If
Speaker 1: you want a PC, like a Microsoft, a PC that's
Speaker 1: running Microsoft operating system, you don't have to buy it
Speaker 1: from IBM. And right, So IBM kind of got out
Speaker 1: of that game a little bit, even to the point
Speaker 1: where their think Pad line, which was their notebook line,
Speaker 1: they ended up licensing out to Lenovo. Yeah, they essentially
Speaker 1: divested themselves of the personal computer business more or less
Speaker 1: when they decided to let Lenovo take that over. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, myself included, were a
Speaker 1: little taken aback by that. Yeah, because he said IBM
Speaker 1: getting out of the personal computer business. Well, we've got
Speaker 1: to remember that Chris and I grew up in a
Speaker 1: time where IBM was almost synonymous with personal computers. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's what we really knew them for anyway, because we
Speaker 1: were too young to be using the business stuff apart
Speaker 1: from this electric typewriter. UM. So for us, IBM meant
Speaker 1: personal computers. So when they got out of it, you're like,
Speaker 1: what else do they do? And then you start looking
Speaker 1: into and oh everything, then that makes sense. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: they introduced a lot of stuff in the nineties too.
Speaker 1: They introduced the three and a half inch disk drive. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also Uh in the nineties, there was a big,
Speaker 1: big thing that that made the news worldwide, which was
Speaker 1: the infamous match between Deep Blue and Gary Kasparov, the
Speaker 1: chess champion will Deep Blue was an IBM computer named
Speaker 1: because ibm s color is blue, they're known as Big Blue.
Speaker 1: So Deep Blue went up against Kasparov on the first
Speaker 1: series of games. Kasparov came out the winner, but there
Speaker 1: was a rematch and Deep Blue ended up defeating Kasparov.
Speaker 1: And this kind of showed ibm s um work into
Speaker 1: developing artificial intelligence computer processing ability. Uh, all those sort
Speaker 1: of things, and it's it's work that IBM continues to
Speaker 1: this day. The Watson computer is another example of that,
Speaker 1: where they've put their thought together about how can we
Speaker 1: create a machine that understands semantics, that can can decide
Speaker 1: upon an answer based upon the probability that it's the
Speaker 1: correct one. How can it judge between various responses to
Speaker 1: a query and pick the one that's the most appropriate.
Speaker 1: These are not small challenges, and it's the sort of
Speaker 1: stuff that IBM Research and Development concentrates on. Now it's
Speaker 1: the stuff that drives our technology to the next level.
Speaker 1: So it's it's stuff that we may not see in
Speaker 1: the consumer market for years and years, but it's it's
Speaker 1: the pioneering work that's necessary for us to move forward. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: definitely so. And you know, ib i'm never really got
Speaker 1: out of the business of making very large computing UH
Speaker 1: hardware for organizations of all kinds. It's about to say businesses,
Speaker 1: but really, you know, all sorts of organizations because that
Speaker 1: kind of equipment is necessary for computing high end projects.
Speaker 1: You know, even still doing today doing Herman Hollerith's work
Speaker 1: of tabulating data um. You know, they for a long
Speaker 1: time they they have uh, participated in calculating results for
Speaker 1: the Olympics. Uh, all kinds of projects, the census on
Speaker 1: and off. Um, you know, just amazing stuff. And you
Speaker 1: don't really these are things that you don't see like
Speaker 1: you do the computer on your desktop. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: it's certainly true that IBM is still a dominant player
Speaker 1: in in the industry. And even as we touched on
Speaker 1: in the last episode, the uh, the subtle advances they
Speaker 1: were making in the ability for computers to recognize human speech. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, we were kind of chuckling about it because
Speaker 1: it was it was years before Watson ever made its
Speaker 1: appearance on Jeopardy, decades really, but it was able to
Speaker 1: you know, there was a device that he came up with.
Speaker 1: It could have a thousand word vocabulary and could transcribe
Speaker 1: speech within you know, accuracy rate. That's you know, these things,
Speaker 1: these little steps add up to big advances in computing
Speaker 1: in just more than a hundred years. I think I
Speaker 1: can sum that up with that's one small step for
Speaker 1: an international business machines company, one giant leap for me.
Speaker 1: Let's wrap this up, shall we. We We have talked about
Speaker 1: IBM for three podcasts and now we are done for
Speaker 1: the time being, four if you count the Watson podcast.
Speaker 1: Um So, guys, this was really fascinating for for us
Speaker 1: on our end, We really enjoyed being able to dive
Speaker 1: down and and look at the rich history of this company.
Speaker 1: If you have any companies you think we should concentrate
Speaker 1: on next, well, not immediately next, We're gonna take a
Speaker 1: break from the business side for a little bit and
Speaker 1: we'll have a few other episodes that relate to other stuff.
Speaker 1: But if there's an other company you think that we
Speaker 1: should treat with this sort of this sort of in
Speaker 1: depth coverage, let us know. You can let us know
Speaker 1: on Twitter or Facebook are handled. There is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W or you can shoot us an email and
Speaker 1: that address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and Chris and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. For moralness and thousands of other topics. Visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
Speaker 1: of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the
Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you