what came to be called the Internet. Tim Berners-
Lee created a hypertext language to support the
sharing of textual information among researchers
at CERN in 1980. In 1989, he decided to connect hy-
pertext to the Internet, thereby creating the World
Wide Web.
Operating Systems In addition to the advances in
microcomputer operating systems, highlighted by
the development of DOS by Microsoft, there were
advances in UNIX and the several types of windowed
GUI operating systems in the 1980’s. The UNIX op-
erating system was first developed in 1969 at Ameri-
can Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). Bill Joy,
one of the cofounders of Sun Microsystems, helped
develop an upgrade to the original AT&T UNIX,
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) UNIX, while
working at the University of California at Berkeley.
Joy also led the development of SunOS in 1982,
Sun’s operating system until the 1990’s. Work began
on Mach Kernel UNIX at Carnegie Mellon Univer-
sity in 1985, and a prototype was released in 1987. It
influenced later versions of UNIX, as well as Win-
dows NT. In 1988, the Open Software Foundation
began development of OSF UNIX, which appeared
as a commercial UNIX through a number of vendors
in the 1990’s.
At the start of the 1980’s, computers had limited
GUIs. In 1980, the XEROX Alto introduced a win-
dowed operating system with a friendly GUI. Later
that year, the XEROX Star became the first commer-
cial workstation with a windowed operating system.
In 1984, MIT released its X Windows GUI for UNIX,
and while it was not very successful commercially, it
influenced many later systems. Apple introduced
the ill-fated Lisa, a microcomputer with much of the
functionality of the Star, in 1983, but it was unsuc-
cessful because of its high cost. Apple then intro-
duced the Macintosh in 1984, and Microsoft helped
make it a success with the development of some
innovative applications like Word. Microsoft an-
nounced the first version of its Windows operating
system in 1984 and released Windows 1 in 1985. Win-
dows 1 was limited to a set of fixed, non-overlapping
windows. Windows 2 added tiled windows and other
features in 1987.
Databases While database software existed from
the earliest days of computers, the 1980’s marked a
period of exceptional growth for such software. IBM
introduced its hierarchical Information Manage-
ment System (IMS) in 1968. During the 1980’s, this
was the most important mainframe database manage-
ment system in use. The dBase nonrelational data-
base was developed during the early 1980’s and be-
came the most popular microcomputer database of
the period. Edgar Codd had defined the relational
technique for database management in 1970 while at
IBM, but it did not receive much attention until the
early 1980’s. During the 1980’s, several significant re-
lational database management systems appeared, in-
cluding IBM’s DB2 (1980) and Oracle’s V3 (1982).
RBASE (1982) was the first relational database pro-
gram created for microcomputers. Microsoft began
work on its own desktop relational database manage-
ment system in the late 1980’s, and after a long devel-
opment period it released Access in 1992.
The 1980’s marked the beginnings of object-
oriented databases, with several research prototypes
being developed. By the end of the decade, it was ap-
parent to many that a data warehouse was necessary
to manage all the spreadsheet, database, and image
data being generated by the government, scientists,
and industry.
Computer Security Security of the first computers
was provided by a combination of physical security
and password authentication. This method worked
reasonably well until the 1980’s, when the introduc-
tion of microcomputers and networking greatly in-
creased the number and types of possible attacks.
The first microcomputer virus, Elk Cloner, attacked
some Apple IIs in 1982. The first IBM PC virus was a
boot sector virus called Brain, created in 1986 in Pa-
kistan by the Alvi brothers. In 1987, Fred Cohen de-
fined the term “computer virus” and wrote a paper
about antivirus software. More types of computer at-
tacks appeared in the 1980’s, and they led to the first
antivirus software company, Certus, founded by Pe-
ter Tippett in 1991 and later sold to Symantec.
Impact The advances in computer networking in
the 1980’s laid the foundation for the Internet and
the World Wide Web in the 1990’s. The advances
in microcomputer and supercomputer hardware in
the 1980’s led to an increase in low-cost computer
hardware and the inexpensive personal, business,
and scientific computers in use today. The develop-
ment of easy-to-use windowed operating systems in
the 1980’s laid the foundation for the development
of Windows 3.1 and Office by Microsoft in 1992, sig-
nificantly affecting the way individuals interact with240 Computers The Eighties in America