The IBM Personal Computer was created under the directions of Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida. Any new product that came from the IBM company usually took four years to fully develop, but a special team was given the task of developing it much faster due to competition from other personal computers. The project was dubbed Project Chess, and they developed the PC within a year.

It was on this day, August 12, 1981, that the IMB Personal Computer was introduced. The IBM 5100 was a desktop sized programmable calculator complete with a monitor, keyboard, and data storage. One of its key features was the high quality keyboard that was reliable to over 100 million keystrokes. It was given so much credit, Byte magazine claimed it was 50% of the reason to buy an IBM PC. The IBM PC was so successful, other companies thought of it was the industry standard and manufactured products that worked like the IBM PC.