IBM Corp’s capacity for rewriting industry is quite remarkable you wake up one morning and CMS has suddenly become the Conversational Monitor System and the Cambridge Monitor System is cast into outer darkness, DOS mysteriously transforms itself from a batch mainframe operating system into a personal computer operating system, and now, according to John Akers – with brutal disregard for the sensibilities of his partner, Apple Computer Inc, the second decade of personal computing begins today: yes, IBM launched its Personal Computer in 1981, but by that time, Apple had been in the game for four years, Commodore International Ltd’s Pet was an enormous seller, CP/M machines were to be found in countless offices – and IBM itself had launched a desktop personal computer with built-in screen and disks in 1976 – it ran the Basic and APL languages and was called the 5100 (amd went through 5110, 5120 and 5130 iterations before the PC-DOS box arrived – designated the 5150).
