Second Generation Microcomputers (1977 – present)

As microcomputers continued to evolve they became easier to operate, making them accessible to a larger audience. They typically came with a keyboard and a monitor, or could be easily connected to a TV, and they supported visual representation of text and numbers on the screen. In other words, lights and switches were replaced by screens and keyboards, and the necessity to understand binary code was diminished as they increasingly came with programs that could be used by issuing more easily understandable commands. Famous early examples of such computers include Commodore PET, Apple II, and in the 80s the IBM PC. The nature of the underlying electronic components didn’t change between these computers and modern computers we know of today, but what did change was the number of circuits that could be put onto a single microchip. Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore predicted the doubling of the number of transistor on a single chip every two years, which became known as “Moore’s Law”, and this trend has roughly held for over 30 years thanks to advancing manufacturing processes and microprocessor designs. The consequence was a predictable exponential increase in processing power that could be put into a smaller package, which had a direct effect on the possible form factors as well as applications of modern computers, which is what most of the forthcoming paradigm shifting innovations in computing were about.