Question

How did personal computers evolve and who made them happen?

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Answer 1

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers

-Thomas Jr Watson

Computers in the past were never considered for personal use.In fact one of the founders of the greatest companies had predicted that there was a world market for around five computers.And if we look at the scenario now,its completely changed.Now every single person might have five devices.Such is the sheer amount of advancement that has happened when it comes to the personal computer industry

Computers in the past were very huge.They needed four to five rooms for their housing.They needed skilled people to operate them and they consumed enormous amount of electricity.So a common man could never think of owning a computer.It was always governments,universities that had computers.But even these computers could only do a very handful tasks and needed huge manpower and resources for that.Any other person would have also thought as how Thomas Jr Watson thought back then.But as we all know progress is the only way forward for anything

There are many reasons why personal computers became so cheap and easily accessible later on in the beginning of the 21st century.Here are the few reasons I feel have made the biggest difference.The first credit goes to the invention of the transistor by William Shockley and few others.This greatly reduced the size of the computers and their cost.Transistors were cheap,small and above all they had a longer life than the vacum tubes.I would like to give the second credit to Steve Jobs for popularising the concept of personal computers and building them.Then the next great leap which brought common man into the personal computing era is the creation of graphical user interface.This allowed a large group of people to embrace the computers because now anyone could use the computers and learn things easily.Instead of typing onto long terminals and consoles,now everything became so simple.There are also various other factors like the huge popularity of the internet during the 2000's led to people getting curious and adapting those technologies.And also the price drastically reduced because of so many number of companies trying to sell computers.This meant that people could purchase them at a much lower cost.So all these factors contributed to the mass usage of personal computers

Now we are at a stage where personal computing has evolved to a great extent.Computers have become an essential part of our daily lives.We cannot live without them.Be it booking a movie ticket or completing our assignments,we are totally dependent on them.Just like Thomas Watson even we cannot exactly predict what the future may have in store for us.The best we can do is change ourselves according to the developments and accomodate them in our lifestyle