Chapter 16 discusses the history of the computer. Important events include IBM bringing out the personal computer, and Xerox PARC inventing the graphical user interface. Paul Allen and Bill Gates left Harvard in 1975 to set up a computer laboratory. A year later Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak set up Apple, followed soon by Dan Bricklin inventing the electronic spreadsheet. At the start of the 1980s Gates leased the MS-DOS operating system to IBM. Prior to all this, in 1969 the Advanced Research Product Agency set up ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet. Other topics covered in this chapter include the birth of electronic mail, uses and abuses of the Internet, security and coding, and the Minitel in France. The last part of the chapter looks at the Soviet Union and the InterNyet.
