Triumph of the Nerds

Triumph of the Nerds is a documental that takes us back to when the personal computer or PC was first created. It honestly is a win for the nerds because they were able to accomplish many softwares, chips, models, etc. that make today's technology all possible. Cringley, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Paul Allen and more nerds were part of this amazing adventure. It was funny to hear how they just had pizza and coke, didn't have to take showers or personal relationships because they were too busy inventing, creating and coding. They did not sleep for days and their work hours were continuous.

In part 1, Cringley mentions that personal computers are one of the three largest industries in the world. It also made clear that this was all an accident. These were nerds that shared the same dream and that instead of having a social life they put their minds into creating. Everything happen in Silicon Valley in San Francisco, California were six Stanford Graduates shared the dream of making the first PC. Computers used to be the size of humans and they work on a system of binary codes of 1s and 0s. 1 was on and 0 was off, they also had a set of instructions which was called program and these were like a set of commands so the 1s and 0s could add, subtract, multiply or divide. This was also known as the machine language, where you had to switch buttons to give these commands. Steve Wozniak fell in love with the 1/0s and started to see how he and his partner Steve Jobs would take from that. Computer's data was first processed by vacuum tubes which was why the computers were so big but Intel invented a chip that allowed the main frame computer million transistors. Intel was a company that also work every day and night. Intel didn't not have offices only cubicles. They launched this chip but only for calculators and traffic lights they did not see the future of the chips in a PC. The first PC was launched in January 1975, on the magazine Popular Electronics, it was called the Altair 8800. Altair 8800 was not available for sale because it was more of a computer quit than an actual computer. The Altair 8800 was a panel with switches but the main problem was that it didn't have any connections to a monitor, printer, or keyboard. Paul Allen, a 19 year-old boy that listened to acid rock and watched action movies, solved this problem. On the other hand, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs worked in a garage creating the Apple 1 which was a total failure. Two years passed, and they came up with the Apple II which was a total success. It had the spreadsheet of Visicalc and by 1980 Apple became a billion dollar industry until the rise of IBM.

In Part 2, these inventors explained that all these were creations for fun, none of them taught it would actually be a business. IBM became the largest computer company in the world of american industry. It's founder Tom Watson and his son hired conservative hard workers and enforced a strict dress code. For the PC IBM wanted a language system with and operating system. Bill Gates, Microsoft was willing to provide the language system and Gary Nutt had the operating system. Gary refused to give their operating system but Gates bought that operating system from a local company owned by Tim Patterson. Bill Gates was a wealthy yet competitive teenager that wasn't going to miss the opportunity of IBM's deal. In 1981, the IBM PC was developed in Boca Raton, Florida with a new spreadsheet call Lotus 123. IBM thought they had already won the battle, little did they know that all companies started to clone IBM PCs by adopting the strategy of reverse engineering which was to create something that worked the same way. Compac was one of the companies that hired virgin people in the field to clone PCs and sell them a little bit cheaper. Intel sold the microchips to all these companies so they could clone the PCs. Microsoft was with IBM through all of this because they thought that if they were in their side it will also lead to their success until they came up with the Windows program. IBM took Windows as a threat from Microsoft and they decided to break off.  Later on, in 1984, Apple created the first Macintosh computer. 

In Part 3, they give a brief history on the Xerox company and how they were able to revolutionize the PC in 1971, but they didn't see it. Speaking of Apple, in 1976 Jobs wanted the Macintosh to be the best computer. He even made a parody game called the Macintosh Dating Game in 1983. Bill Gates participated in this game and Jobs didn't not realize that he was about to become his number one rival. Macintosh was the first affordable personal computer but there was a problem. The computer did not print what was on the screen so Apple bought Adobe systems created by John Warnock. This allowed the Macintosh to create graphic designs and desktop publishing. Although all of this sounded great, Macintosh computers were not selling and Jobs was incapable of seeing that. With that said, John Sculley fired Steve Jobs. In 1990, Microsoft created the Windows 3 program which sold over 30 million copies. Apple sued Microsoft because they said that the fonts and designs were the same as the Macintosh. Apple lost the demand. In 1995, Microsoft created even a better and updated software Windows 95 which was the first software I used as a kid. Later on, Larry Ellison created Oracle and he truly believed that the PC was a waste because isn't of saving everything into a floppy disk, they should be saved into the Internet. Nowadays there was been many more softwares and devices invented such as the iPhone, iPad, Tablet, Android, iPod, iCloud etc. It is ironic to think that this started with a bunch of nerds that had coding as a hobby.