personal computer (PC)

Microcomputer designed for use by one person at a time. A typical PC assemblage comprises a CPU; internal memory consisting of RAM and ROM; data storage devices (including a hard disc, a floppy disc, or CD-ROM); and input/output devices (including a display screen, keyboard, mouse, and printer). The PC industry began in 1977 when Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), introduced the Apple II. Radio Shack and Commodore Business Machines also introduced PCs that year. IBM entered the PC market in 1981. The IBM PC, with increased memory capacity and backed by IBM's large sales organization, quickly became the industry standard. Apple's Macintosh (1984) was particularly useful for desktop publishing. Microsoft Corp. introduced MS Windows (1985), a graphical user interface that gave PCs many of the capabilities of the Macintosh, initially as an overlay of MS-DOS. Windows went on to replace MS-DOS as the dominant operating system for personal computers. Uses of PCs multiplied as the machines became more powerful and application software proliferated. Today, PCs are used for word processing, Internet access, and many other daily tasks.

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Type of chromatography using filter paper or other special paper as the stationary phase. Spots of sample and reference materials are applied, usually as liquids, near one edge (or corner, for two-dimensional PC) of the paper. The edge of the paper is dipped in a solvent, which travels along it by capillarity, moving the components of the sample at rates depending on their relative solubilities in the solvent. In two-dimensional PC, the paper is then turned 90° and the new edge dipped in a different solvent. The components of the sample mixture, visible as separated spots, are identified by comparing the distances they have traveled with those of the known reference materials. PC is especially useful for complex mixtures of amino acids, peptides, carbohydrates, steroids, and many other organic compounds and inorganic ions.

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• Personal computer, a computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals
• Political correctness, language that appears calculated to provide a minimum of offense

PC may also stand for:

Science and medicine

• Pachyonychia congenita, a genetic skin disorder
• Parsec, an astronomical measure of distance
• Path connected, a concept in mathematical topology where two points are linked with a path
• Phosphatidylcholine, a phospholipid
• Photonic crystal, a photonic band gap material
• Polycarbonate, a plastic polymer
• Posterior commissure, brain landmark commonly used in biomedical image processing
• Progressive contextualization, a scientific method
• Pubococcygeus muscle
• post cibum (Latin for "after meals"), a medical prescription shorthand

Law, politics, and business

• Philippine Constabulary, a defunct police force of the Philippines
• Police Constable, a police rank used in Britain and some Commonwealth countries
• President's Counsel (Sri Lanka), a legal position in Sri Lanka
• Principal Consultant, a management consulting position
• Privy council, a body that advises the head of state of a nation
• Privy councillor, a member of a privy council
• Prime cost or variable cost, items that a client hasn’t specifically selected at the time of the contract but the builder or trades person has made an allowance for in the total price
• Process control, a statistics and engineering discipline that deals with architectures, mechanisms, and algorithms
• Professional corporation, a special corporate form for licensed professionals, such as attorneys, architects, and doctors
• Profit centre

Transport and places

• Park City, Utah
• ISO 3166 country code for the former Pacific Islands Trust Territory
• Pitcairn Islands: FIPS PUB 10-4 territory code
• The Penn Central railroad in the United States
• Patrol craft, a small naval vessel generally designed for coastal defence duties
• Patrol, Coastal, a US Navy hull classification symbol
• Port Charlotte, Florida

People

• Paul Chambers (1935–1969), jazz bassist known as "Mr. PC"
• P. Chidambaram (born 1945), finance minister of India
• Patrick Carpenter, one of the collaborators in the Ninja Tune recording outfit DJ Food
• Phil Collins (born 1951), English musician
• Pierre Cardin (born 1922), fashion designer

Product identification

• PC, a specific type of Mazda C engine
• President's Choice, a private label brand of Loblaw Companies Limited
• Production code number, a designation used to identify television episodes
• Tandy Pocket Computer, one of a small line of computers from Radio Shack made in the early 1980s

Organizations

Political parties

• Plaid Cymru, a Welsh nationalist political party
• Various Canadian parties of the central right, such as
• Progressive Canadian Party, Canada's new progressive conservative party
• Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, a conservative political party of the Canadian province of Alberta
• Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, a now-defunct Canadian centre-right conservative political party
• Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, a conservative political party of the Canadian province of Ontario
• Porozumienie Centrum, now-defunct Polish right-wing political party
• Many Communist parties in languages with a different word order (see List of Communist parties), including
• Partido Comunista, a major left-wing political party in Portugal
• Partido Comunista de Chile, a Chilean political party

Educational institutions

• Phoenix College, a community college in Phoenix, Arizona
• Presbyterian College, in Clinton, South Carolina
• Providence College, a private four-year Catholic college in Providence, Rhode Island
• Pembroke College, Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford
• Physique-Chimie, short for ESPCI, an engineering school in France
• Port Charlotte High School in Port Charlotte, Florida

Other

• Presbyterian Church (USA), a Christian denomination
• Protes'tant Conference, a loose association of Lutheran churches and churchworkers
• Program committee, members in the organization of an academic conference which are responsible for the peer review of submitted papers

Art and entertainment

• Piano concerto, a concerto for solo piano and orchestra
• Picture cover, a method of book binding in which the cover of the book has a picture relating to the contents
• Player character or playable character, a fictional character controlled by a human player, usually in role-playing games or computer games
• Pocket ¢hange, a pricing game from The Price Is Right

Other initialisms

• Postcard or postal card, a thick, typically rectangular piece of paper intended for mailing
• Preclear (Scientology), a person who has not overcome the "reactive mind"
• Public convenience, a euphemism for a toilet
• Program counter, a special register inside CPUs indicating where the computer is in its instruction sequence
• Proto-Celtic language, the reconstructed common ancestor of the Celtic languages
• "Partly cloudy", a weather forecast designation mostly used in North American English newspapers
• Pro-choice, a description used by people who believe that women should have the legal right to have an abortion and the legal right to be protected from coerced or forced abortion
• Probable cause
• Prontor-Compur, a standard connector type for photographic flash synchronization
• The Serbian initials for Republika Srpska