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The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals.
A personal computer, often referred to as a PC or simply computer, is a computer designed for individual use. [1] It is typically used for tasks such as word processing, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and gaming. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or technician.
A computer screen showing a background wallpaper photo of the Palace of Versailles. A wallpaper or background (also known as a desktop background, desktop picture or desktop image on computers) is a digital image (photo, drawing etc.) used as a decorative background of a graphical user interface on the screen of a computer, smartphone or other electronic device.
The VIC-20 was the first computer of any type to sell over one million units, and the 64 is still the highest-selling single model of personal computer ever, with over 17 million produced before production stopped in 1994 – a 12-year run with only minor changes. [91]
Adam Osborne founded Osborne Computer and produced the Osborne 1 in 1981. The Osborne 1 had a five-inch screen, incorporating a modem port, two 5 + 1 ⁄ 4-inch floppy drives, and a large collection of bundled software applications. An aftermarket battery pack was available. The computer company was a failure and did not last for very long.
The original GUI was developed on the Xerox Alto computer system at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the early 1970s and commercialized by many vendors throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Since the late 1990s, there have been three operating systems in widespread use on personal computers: Apple Inc.'s macOS, the open source Linux, and Microsoft ...
According to the personal computer pioneer Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. [7] The computer bus designed for the Altair became a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus , and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft 's founding product, Altair ...
While popular usage of the word "computer" is synonymous with a personal electronic computer, [l] a typical modern definition of a computer is: "A device that computes, especially a programmable [usually] electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes ...