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On a more substantial note, 1982 was also the year in which Americans fell in love with computers and welcomed them into their homes. For years, number-crunching machines by such manufacturers as IBM and Digital Equipment Corp. had been familiar back-office fixtures of large corporations, and increasingly even medium-size firms. But during 1982, a whole new generation of downsize "personal computers" began multiplying on the desks of small businesses as well as in homes and apartments of people across the country. Driven by rapidly declining prices and manufacturers' efforts to make the machines "user friendly," U.S. sales of the devices soared to $4.4 billion during the year, double the 1981 level.
In spite of the pervasive economic gloom, 1982 was a banner year for savers and investors. Having suffered huge savings outflows in prior years as depositors withdrew their funds to chase after the high interest rates available from money-market mutual funds, commercial banks and savings and loan institutions were at last freed by regulators to offer federally insured free-market interest rates of their own to small savers. The result: a breathless nationwide scramble by banks everywhere to exploit their new-found freedom and snatch depositors back from the money funds.
Nowhere did investors benefit more handsomely than on Wall Street. Abruptly abandoning a costly seven-year struggle to break up AT&T, the world's largest business corporation (1981 revenues: $58.2 billion), the U.S. Justice Department agreed to a surprising out-of-court settlement in which Ma Bell pledged to divest itself of about 75% of its total assets in return for permission to compete freely in telecommunications and computer markets. The action directly affected some 3.2 million shareholders, who late next year will receive, in addition to each ten shares of AT&T then held, one share of stock in each of seven new regional telephone companies to be shed by Bell beginning Jan. 1,1984. Though AT&T's share prices stayed steady during the year, other blue chips performed spectacularly. Sensing in mid-August that the Federal Reserve Board was beginning to ease its tight-money policy in an effort to stimulate growth in the economy and prevent the recession from turning into outright depression, investors surged into the market, sending the widely watched Dow Jones average of 30 industrial stocks on the most explosive upward ride in Wall Street history. By last week the Dow stood at 1012, a 30% climb from its summer low of 777. Bond prices also soared, with 30-year Treasuries climbing some 32% during the year.