One of the first serious business applications for
microcomputers was the spreadsheet program, the
first of which was VisiCalc, released in 1979. Micro-
soft marketed the superior spreadsheet MultiPlan in
1982, which in turn was greatly improved upon by
Lotus Software’s Lotus 1-2-3 in 1983. Microsoft’s ver-
sion was ported to Windows as Excel in 1987.
The first word-processing program for micro-
computers, Scribe, was created in 1980 by Brian
Reid; the most popular presentation system, Power-
Point, was introduced in 1987 by Bob Gaskins, and
a well-liked communications program, ProComm,
was created in 1986 by Datastorm Technologies.
Microsoft Office for the Mac appeared in 1989, and
a version for Windows appeared a year later. Many
graphics programs were developed for the Mac, in-
cluding the Aldus PageMaker desktop publishing
system in 1985, and the Adobe Postscript printing
language was created in 1984.
Supercomputers After introducing the Cray-1 in
1976, Seymour Cray developed the CRAY X-MP in
1982 by interconnecting multiple Cray-1’s with a
high-speed switch. While the X-MP was very fast, it
was the Cray-2, released in 1985, that held most of
the performance records for a supercomputer until
the 1990’s. Cray started work on his ill-fated gallium-
arsenide-based Cray-3 in the late 1980’s. Only one
Cray-3 was produced, and while it was a powerful
supercomputer, it could not match the price-to-
performance ratios of parallel processors like the
Connection Machine and the Hypercube. In 1983,
Danny Hills created the Connection Machine, a
computer with thousands of simple processors, and
in 1985 Intel manufactured its iPSC Hypercube, a
computer with hundreds of standard microproces-
sors connected with a high-speed backplane.
Networking and the Internet Three major network
protocols were developed during the 1980’s. IBM’s
Systems Network Architecture (SNA) was developed
from 1974 to 1989. One implementation of the pro-
tocol, Virtual Telecommunications Access Method
(VTAM), was used to tie IBM mainframes together.
TCP/IP was defined by 1975. It was tested and devel-
oped over the next eight years, and on January 1,
1983, it became the principal protocol of ARPANET,
the Department of Defense (DoD) network that
eventually grew into the Internet. TCP/IP’s popu-
larity was confirmed in 1986, when the fledgling
National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet)
adopted the protocol as well. DecNet was devel-
oped during the 1975-1992 period as alternative to
TCP/IP.
During the 1980’s, adoption of these and other
networking standards made interconnecting com-
puters from different vendors a reality. Local area
networks (LANs) were defined with the IEEE 802
standard, created by the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers in February, 1980. The Open
Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model
was introduced in Europe and later adopted in the
United States as the best general model for wide
area networking. In 1985, the Internet Architecture
Board held workshops on TCP/IP for the computer
industry that greatly increased the use of this proto-
col. The support of the DoD and the Internet Archi-
tecture Board made TCP/IP a de facto network stan-
dard.
Connecting the computers of the world together
with TCP/IP provided the backbone that createdThe Eighties in America Computers 239
In 1983, rather than name a Man of the Year,Timemagazine
named the computer the Machine of the Year, recognizing its effects
upon all aspects of 1980’s culture.(Courtesy, Time, Inc.)