Editing Timeline of computing 1980–1989 (section)

==1981==
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Date
! Location
! class="unsortable" | Event
|- valign="top"
| March
| UK
| Sinclair [[ZX81]] was released,<ref>Crisp, Jason (6 March 1981). "Sinclair launches new personal computer costing only £70". ''Financial Times''. London. p. 6.</ref> for a similar price to the ZX80 (see 1980).
|- valign="top"
| 8 April 
| US
| [[Osborne 1]] portable computer introduced;<ref name="hogan19810413">{{cite magazine |author=Hogan, Thom |date=April 13, 1981 |title=Osborne Introduces Portable Computer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dj4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA1 |access-date=April 4, 2011 |magazine=InfoWorld |publisher=IDG |pages=1, 44 |volume=3 |issue=7}}</ref> the company sold many units before filing for bankruptcy only two years later.
|- valign="top"
| 12 August
| US
| IBM announced their [[open architecture]] [[IBM Personal Computer]].<ref name="OAPC">{{cite web|url=https://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/pc-hardware/286065-why-the-ibm-pc-had-an-open-architecture |title=Why the IBM PC Had an Open Architecture|author=Michael J. Miller|date=August 8, 2011|work=[[pcmag.com]] |quote=''"In some ways, the most far-reaching decision made by the team that built the IBM PC was to use an open architecture, rather than one that was proprietary to IBM. That decision led to the market for add-in boards, for large numbers of third party applications, and eventually to a large number of competitors all creating "IBM-compatible" machines. [[William C. Lowe|Bill Lowe]] went to IBM's Corporate Management Committee in July 1980 to propose the project"''}}</ref>  100,000 orders were taken by Christmas. The design becomes far more successful than IBM had anticipated, and becomes the basis for most of the modern personal computer industry.<ref name="OAPC"/>{{Clarify|reason=1. There is no 'computer industry'. 2. What is meant by 'becomes the basis for'?|date=June 2021}}

[[IBM Monochrome Display Adapter|MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter)]], text only, introduced with IBM PC.

[[MS-DOS]] 1.0, PC DOS 1.0.

Microsoft (known mainly for their programming languages) were commissioned by IBM to write the operating system; they bought a program called 86-DOS from Tim Paterson which was loosely based on CP/M-80. The final program from Microsoft was marketed by IBM as PC DOS and by Microsoft as MS-DOS; collaboration on subsequent versions continued until version 5.0 in 1991.

Compared to modern versions of DOS, version 1 was very basic. The most notable difference was the presence of just one directory, the root directory, on each disk. Subdirectories were not supported until version 2.0 (March 1983).

[[MS-DOS]] was the main operating system for all IBM-PC compatible computers until Microsoft released Windows 95. According to Microsoft, in 1994, MS-DOS was running on some 100 million computers worldwide.
|- valign="top"
| September
| US
| The [[TCP/IP]] protocol is established. This is the protocol that carries most of the information across the Internet.<ref>{{Cite journal|title=rfc793|url=https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc793|access-date=2021-06-28|website=datatracker.ietf.org|date=September 1981}}</ref>
|- valign="top"
| ?
| US
| [[Richard Feynman]] proposed [[quantum computer]]s.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Feynman |first1=Richard |author-link=Richard Feynman |date=June 1982 |title=Simulating Physics with Computers |url=https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/Feynman.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=International Journal of Theoretical Physics |volume=21 |issue=6/7 |pages=467–488 |bibcode=1982IJTP...21..467F |doi=10.1007/BF02650179 |s2cid=124545445 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190108115138/https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/Feynman.pdf |archive-date=8 January 2019 |access-date=28 February 2019}}</ref> The main application he had in mind was the simulation of quantum systems, but he also mentioned the possibility of solving other problems.
|- valign="top"
| ?
| US
| The [[Xerox Star|Xerox 8010 ('Star') System]], the first commercial system to use a WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing Devices) graphic user interface. Apple incorporated many of the ideas therein in the development of the interface for the [[Apple Lisa]] (see January 1983).
|- valign="top"
| ?
| US
| [[Symbolics]] introduced the LM-2 workstation, a [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]]-based workstation based on the MIT CADR architecture.
|}