FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread: August 12, 2008

Good morning, Whitewater

Whitewater has no municipal public meetings scheduled today.

The National Weather Service, predicts a high of 78 degrees and a slight chance of thunderstorms. The Farmers’ Almanac starts a new four-day series by predicting that the weather will be “squally over the Great Lakes.”

On this day in American history, in 1981, IBM unveiled the 5150 personal computer. Here are some of the details, from Wired.com:

The 16-kb base model, with no data-storage drives included, cost $1,565 ($3,770 in today’s money). If you loaded a 64-kB box with all the standard features, that jumped to $2,880 ($6,930 today), and souped up with color graphics and 256 kB, it’d cost you about $6,000 ($14,400 today). Available software included the VisiCalc spreadsheet, Easywriter 1.0 and Adventure, Microsoft’s first game.

IBM retailed the 5150 through ComputerLand and Sears, Roebuck. It sold 65,000 PCs in four months, with 100,000 orders taken by Christmas.

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