2. De Facto standard

The personal computer began to be manufactured in the early 1980s.

Various companies started to produce and sell their own version of the PC.  However, they were developed with only their own equipment in mind. No thought was given for other companies to be able to add their own hardware.

This meant that only their own printers, monitors, hard drives etc could be used with their particular system. They also had their own operating systems such as CP/M.

There were no standards!

IBM had a different mind set.  They developed a personal computer that was designed specifically to encourage other vendors to make additional hardware such as expansion cards for the IBM PC.

IBM then told other manufacturers how to make their equipment compatible with the IBM PC.

IBM effectively created the 'de-facto' standard for the personal computer industry.

A 'de-facto' standard is one created almost by default because of one dominant player in that industry. There is no formal outside organisation that approved or signed off the standard.

Other de-facto standards

• Tagging MP3 files using the ID3 format to identify title, artist, album, track number
• QWERTY keyboard
• The AT command set for controlling modems
• Adobe Postscript language for laser printers
• Microsoft Word format for documents
• Photoshop PSD format for editable images