Build 409c is December 1990 build of MS-DOS 5.00. (Image: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)
In this 50-year retrospective, we're looking at technologies that had an impact on the world, paved the way for the future, and changed us, in ways good and bad. Previously, we explored the 1970s[1]. Now we continue our time travels in the 1980s...
1980: Tim Berners-Lee's ENQUIRE early Web prototype
I'm giving the nod for 1980's innovation of the year to a failed project. ENQUIRE[2] was a project developed in 1980 by Tim Berners-Lee[3] while he was at CERN, and, in many ways, can be considered a concept prototype for the Web.Read also: Happy 29th birthday world wide web: Inventor slams tech giants[4] ENQUIRE was a bit more like a cross between HyperCard[5] and a wiki, and required central maintenance. Even so, it was Berners-Lee's first run at the use of hypertext for group communication and information organization. Because of the centralized maintenance required, ENQUIRE wasn't really accessible to other users. The original ENQUIRE software disk has been lost to time. If it weren't for how totally the web has transformed our world, we wouldn't have given 1980 to ENQUIRE. But even as an early prototype, if it moved the needle that would knit the web, it had amazing impact. Runners up: Pac-Man[6], one of the most popular video games of all time; The Empire Strikes Back[7], arguably the best of the Star Wars series on the movie that kept the franchise alive; the Microsoft Z-80 SoftCard[8], a device that brought CP/M[9] business programs to the
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