1964: DEC PDP-8 Mini Computer. The First Minicomputer, built by Digital EquipmentCost (DEC) it cost $16,000 to buy. 1969: ARPANET Started by the US Dept. of Defence for research inton networking. It is the original basis for what now forms the Internet. 1969(April 7): he first RFC, RFC0001 published. The RFCs (network working group, Request For Comment) are a series of papers which are used to develop and define protocols for networking, originally the basis for ARPANET there are now thousands of them applying to all aspects of the Internet. Collectively they document everything about the way the Internet and computers on it should behave, whether it's TCP/IP networking or how email headers should be written there will be a set of RFCs describing it.
1970: Development of UNIX operating system started. It was later released as C source code to aid portability, and subsequently versions are obtainable for many different computers, including the IBM PC. It and it's clones are still widely used on network and Internet servers, and Red-hat's LINUX is popular as an alternative to DOS on the P.C. Originally developed by Ken Thomson and Dennis Ritchie. 1970: The Internet was formed, although at the time it was a military network called ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency network). It was opened to non-military users later in the 1970s and many universities and large businesses went on-line. US Vice-president Al-Gore was the first to call it the Information superhighway.
1980: Development of MS-DOS/PC-DOS began. Microsoft (known mainly for their programming languages) were commissioned to write the Operating System for the PC, Digital Research failed to get the contract (there is much legend as to the real reason for this). DR's Operating System,CP/M-86 was later shipped but it was actually easier to adapter programs to DOS rather than CP/M-86, and CP/M-86 cost $495. As Microsoft didn't have an operating system to sell they bought Seattle Computer Product's 86-DOS which had been written by Tim Paterson earlier that year (86-DOS was also know as Q-DOS, Quick & Dirty Operating System, it was a more-or-less 16bit version of CP/M). The rights were actually bought in July 1981. It is reputed that IBM found over 300 bugs in the code when they subjected the operating system and re-wrote much of the code.
1990 (May 22): Introduction of Windows 3.0 by Bill Gates & Microsoft. It is true multitasking (or pretends to be on computers less than an 80386, by operating in 'Real' mode) system. It maintained compatibility with MS-DOS, on an 80386 it even allows such programs to multitask - which they were not designed to do. This created a real threat to the Macintosh and despite a similar product, IBM's OS/2, it was very successful. Various improvements were made, versions 3.1, 3.11 - but the next major step did not come until Windows '95 in 1995 which combined technology from Windows 3.x with that from Windows NT (a 32-bit operating system, mainly used for file-servers).
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