Allan Dwan ( April 3, 1885 – December 28, 1981 ) was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer and screenwriter.

* 1892 – Donald Wills Douglas, Sr., American aviation industrialist ( d. 1981 )

* 1892 – Lowell Thomas, American writer ( d. 1981 )

* 1981 – Robert Earnshaw, Zambian-Welsh footballer

* 1981 – Jeff Faine, American football player and agent

* 1981 – Kari Jobe, American singer and songwriter ( Gateway Worship )

* 1981 – Alex Suarez, American bassist ( Cobra Starship and This Is Ivy League )

* 1981 – The first launch of a Space Shuttle ( Columbia ) takes place-the STS-1 mission.

* 1981 – Nicolás Burdisso, Argentine footballer

* 1981 – Grant Holt, English footballer

* 1981 – Brian Vandborg, Danish cyclist

* 1981 – John O ' Shea, Irish footballer

* 1981 – Emma Pierson, English actress

* 1981 – Kunal Nayyar, Indian-English actor

* 1895 – Andreas Alföldi, Hungarian historian and archaeologist ( d. 1981 )

* 1933 – Joke Smit, Dutch activist and politician ( d. 1981 )

* 1981 – Maxwell Cabelino Andrade, Spanish footballer

* 1981 – Alessandro Gamberini, Italian footballer

* 1981 – Demetria McKinney, American actress

* 1981 – Vitantonio Liuzzi, Italian race car driver

* 1981 – Travie McCoy, American rapper and songwriter ( Gym Class Heroes )

* 1981 – Diána Póth, Hungarian figure skater

* 1981 – Jarvis Hayes, American basketball player

* 1981 – Li Jiawei, Singaporean table tennis player

* 1981 – Claire Dames, American porn actress

A few years later, in 1981, IBM introduced the first DOS based IBM PC, and due to the overwhelming popularity of PCs and their clones, DOS soon became the operating system on which the majority of BBS programs were run.

* Allen, Frances E., " A History of Language Processor Technology in IBM ", IBM Journal of Research and Development, v. 25, no. 5, September 1981.

In 1981, IBM introduced the Color Graphics Adapter, which could display four colors with a resolution of 320 by 200 pixels.

Enterprise shipped in 1981, running RDOS, but the introduction of the IBM PC the same year made most other machines disappear under the radar.

It was later ported to the IBM PC and released when the PC was announced in 1981.

In 1981 the first IBM PC was introduced, with MS-DOS operating system.

In 1983, Microsoft announced the development of Windows, a graphical user interface ( GUI ) for its own operating system ( MS-DOS ), which had shipped for IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981.

The ISA bus was developed by a team led by Mark Dean at IBM as part of the IBM PC project in 1981.

It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981.

When the PC was introduced in 1981, it was designated as the IBM 5150, putting it in the " 5100 " series, though its architecture was not directly descended from the IBM 5100.

Kermit was developed at Columbia University in 1981 to allow students to transfer files between IBM or DEC DECSYSTEM-20 mainframe computers and removable media on microcomputers ( initially Intertec Superbrains running CP / M ).

The scanning tunneling microscope, an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level, was developed in 1981 by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986.

The IBM PC in 1981 cemented the doom of the CMOS-8s by making a legitimate, well-supported small microprocessor computer.

IBM introduced a 16-color scheme ( one bit each for RGB and Intensity ) with the Color Graphics Adapter ( CGA ) for its first IBM PC ( 1981 ), later improved with the Enhanced Graphics Adapter ( EGA ) in 1984.

The smiley is the printable version of characters 1 and 2 of ( black-and-white versions of ) codepage 437 ( 1981 ) of the first IBM PC and all subsequent PC compatible computers.

Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer ( at IBM Zürich ), the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986.

In the early IBM PC market ( 1981 – 83 ) the major programming tool vendors all made compilers that worked in a similar fashion.

Initially named CATI ( Conception Assistée Tridimensionnelle Interactive — French for Interactive Aided Three-dimensional Design ) — it was renamed CATIA in 1981, when Dassault created a subsidiary to develop and sell the software, and signed a non-exclusive distribution agreement with IBM.

After the 1981 release by IBM of its IBM PC, the term personal computer became generally used for microcomputers compatible with the IBM PC architecture ( PC compatible ).