The First PC Was Designed and Built in 3 months

A lot of people think Steve Jobs created the first PC. But that is just the misleading power of marketing. In fact, the first ever PC with a GUI was the Alto, started by Xerox in November 1972.

It all began with a bet between a developer and an executive. Chuck Thacker, the developer, said that ‘a futuristic computer could be done in three months'. The executive bet a case of wine that it could not be done. Sure enough, nearly three months later, the Xerox Alto was presented to the world on March 1 1973.

This was no small feat. At the time, this required extensive hardware, operating system, and application design and implementation. The then innovative concept of draggable windows and a mouse had to be conceived from scratch. That’s nearly a decade before Apple and Windows entered the fray.

Despite technology advancing and simplifying a great deal of things since then, many developer projects take longer than the creation of the first PC!

Why is that? The creation of the Xerox Alto showcases what is possible when management executives get out of the way. With some light touch organisation and synchronized mental approaches, a small team was able to achieve a great milestone.

Unfortunately, since then, management structures and approaches have gotten more complex. So while technology has advanced, the attitude of executives has not. More often than not, executives get in the way needlessly. So we are in the surprisingly counterintuitive situation today where most projects developed on PCs take longer than the creation of actual PC!

At We Makers, we are a small team capped at a maximum of 5. And we strive to recreate the synergy of the Alto team. And of course, no project no matter how complex will take longer than three months!