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The release of the Sinclair ZX80
Available in Britain, the Sinclair ZX80 was a small home computer that competed with American companies such as IBM and Apple. Most notable for its small size, it was displayed on a user's TV screen. -
IBM 5150 revolutionizes personal computers
While IBM had been creating computers since the 1970s, it was the 5150 that really impressed the market. Amidst heavy competition from Apple and other companies, the IBM 5150 was created with the intention of being an easy-to-use, affordable home computer, unlike its predecessor, the 5100. -
The CD-ROM is born
Where the CD was able to store music, the CD-ROM (developed from the CD) was capable of holding massive amounts of data. While it had it's drawbacks - it was not re-writable, and the data was read-only - it was still a storage upgrade from the floppy disks at the time. -
Apple Macintosh is released
In 1984, Apple released the first computer to incorporate a graphical user interface (GUI), called the Macintosh. It was the first computer to icons, on-screen windows, and a mouse pointer to navigate around the screen. -
Windows 1.0 is released
Released by Microsoft in 1985, Windows was software designed to compete with Apple's own software system. While Apple created the first GUI interface, Windows was created as an extension to Microsoft's disk operating system (MS-DOS), offering a similar interface to Apple's.