death_place death_date |birth_place birth_date article_title name
lake forest , illinois 19 october 2013 easton , pennsylvania 15 january 1941 william c. lowe
 william c. lowe
william c. lowe

william cleland lowe -lrb- january 15 , 1941 -- october 19 , 2013 -rrb- was a visionary ibm executive and is known as the `` father of the ibm pc '' .
mr. lowe received a bachelor 's degree in physics at lafayette college in pennsylvania in 1962 and joined ibm as a product test engineer .
in 1975 , he was named director of development and manufacturing operations for the general systems division in atlanta , georgia .
in january 1977 , he was appointed director of strategic development for gsd and , later that year , administrative assistant to the division 's president .
in january 1978 , mr. lowe was named systems manager , entry level systems division , for gsd in boca raton , florida , and in november , 1978 , lab director for the site .
in march 1981 , he was appointed a vice president of the information systems division and general manager of the ibm 's rochester , minnesota , facility .
in 1982 , he became vice president for the system products division in white plains , n.y. and in 1983 was appointed assistant group executive for the information systems and communications group .
mr. lowe returned to entry systems division in march 1985 and served as esd president through 1988 .
he was elected an ibm vice president in january 1986 .
in 1973 , while an executive in general systems division , mr. lowe was instrumental in fostering an engineering prototype called scamp -lrb- special computer apl machine portable -rrb- created by dr. paul friedl and a team at the ibm los gatos scientific center .
scamp has been dubbed in `` pc magazine '' as `` the world 's first personal computer '' and this seminal , single-user portable computer now resides in the smithsonian institution , washington , dc .
a non-working industrial design model was also created in 1973 illustrating how the scamp engineering prototype could be transformed into a usable product design for the marketplace .
the engineering prototype and design model were utilized internally by mr. lowe in his early efforts to demonstrate the viability of creating a single-user computer .
throughout the 1970s he continually demonstrated numerous single-user computer design concepts in an effort to convince ibm to enter the personal computer business .
a selection of these early ibm industrial design concepts created in the infancy of personal computing is highlighted in the book `` delete : a design history of computer vapourware '' .
while the up-and-coming personal computer market potential had been studied and validated , mr. lowe determined ibm was unable to internally build a personal computer profitably and in a timely manner .
when he spoke on the topic to the important corporate management committee in july 1980 , he said that to enter the market ibm needed to acquire another company `` because we ca n't do this within the culture of ibm '' .
the company mr. lowe suggested was atari and he had an ibm industrial design model created using their existing atari 800 platform to demonstrate the concept .
ceo john opel had begun to encourage the creation of small , autonomous `` independent business units '' -lrb- ibu -rrb- within ibm .
therefore , rather than acquiring atari , the corporate committee allowed mr. lowe to form a group of 12 employees and requested a strategy for developing the product internally .
the crude prototype they designed barely worked when mr. lowe demonstrated it to the committee in august , 1980 but he presented a detailed business plan that streamlined the development process by proposing an open architecture as well as non-proprietary components and software .
furthermore , the new pc product would be sold through retail stores .
all these elements of mr. lowe 's plan were contrary to ibm tradition .
consequently , the corporate management committee gave approval to move forward and in 1980 mr. lowe designated a multi-disciplinary team under manager don estridge to develop and launch the new product .
in order to move quickly they designed it from standard components and outsourced development of the operating system to microsoft and the processor to intel .
following mr. lowe 's strategy , the ibm pc was developed in one year .
it was launched in august , 1981 and sold far more than had been projected , thereby legitimizing the personal computer business .
in 1988 lowe left ibm for xerox , then in 1991 became chief operating officer of gulfstream aerospace .
he died of a heart attack in 2013 .
