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In an effort to get IBM out of a slump that had hit it in the late 1970s, Opel soon started shaking things up. The company began opening retail stores, not only to sell such staples as electric typewriters, but also to position it for a move into the fast-expanding personal computer field. In 1980 top management secretly gave the go-ahead to an engineering team, cloistered at a plant in Boca Raton, Fla., to begin designing a small computer (the project was code-named Acorn). Twelve months later, the PC was rolling off the production line. Breaking with tradition, IBM had used many non-IBM components: the TV monitor came from Taiwan, the printer from Japan and the microprocessor from Intel Corp., a major chipmaker in which IBM last week acquired a 12% interest for $250 million. The investment was one of the largest IBM has ever made in an outside corporation. Software for the PC was provided by outside suppliers as well. To IBM's embarrassment, early users discovered that the PC misplaced decimal points in certain computations, a flaw quickly corrected. But Opel felt no need to be defensive. Said he: "We added real value to that machine, and we will add more as we go along. The performance characteristics are quite unique." With PCs now selling at a brisker rate than ever, the marketplace apparently agreed that IBM had built the Cadillac of the 1982 class.
Adam Osborne: Plugging a Hole
As a gossipy and acid-tongued columnist in the trade press, Adam Osborne, 43, regularly charged the microcomputer industry with failing to innovate or serve consumer needs. Finally, in 1981 Osborne decided to produce his own personal computer. A year later the Osborne 1 appeared. Weighing only 24 lbs., it was packaged in a plastic case, could be tucked under an airline seat and carried a price tag of $1,795, including a valuable library of software. The erstwhile heckler had produced the first truly portable business computer.
Scoffers said that the box-shaped beast resembled a World War II field radio. But it had all the features of a higher-priced computer: a detachable keyboard, a screen (albeit only 5 in. diagonal), 64K of memory and two built-in disc drives to run and store programs. It also filled a need. Says Osborne: "I saw a truck-sized hole in the industry, and I plugged it." Even Jobs, often a target of Osborne's stings, professed admiration for his entrepreneurial talent.
Osborne was born in Bangkok to British parents; his father, a somewhat eccentric professor, spent much of his time trying to convert Christians to Hinduism. Osborne earned a doctorate in chemical engineering and worked for Shell Oil Co. before quitting to become a computer consultant and industry gadfly. His self-published book, An Introduction to Microcomputers, sold so well (300,000 copies) that he set up his own trade publishing company, which McGraw-Hill later bought.