The thing to keep in mind with regard to the significance of the C language and this particular time-frame is that personal computers were becoming capable of hosting a C compiler. Today, we don't think about the ability to host a C compiler to be a constraint, but with early micro-computers it was. For instance, the Atari-era of computers, could not easily host a C-compiler. There was a version called "Deep-Blue-C" which is a subset. In fact, "compilers" were rare. More common were interpreters because they required less resources.<p>Running alternative operating systems on early micro-computers, such as CP/M on an Apple-II, provided more capabilities, and ability run slightly more powerful software<p>The IBM PCs and clones around that time-frame certainly had the power to host compilers, Turbo-Pascal was one early example.<p>Also, back then, with some exceptions, most commercial products on micro-computers were written in Assembly language, not a high-level language. This was done for performance. This was common.<p>However, C was generally regarded as producing code that's fast enough that enabled programmers to use it instead or coding directly in Assembly. Certainly, with the new crop of computers, the faster IBM PCs (ATs), Macintosh, Atari ST, Amiga, all had sufficiently sophisticated compilers where that became standard issue. Pascal and then C.<p>So around 1983, C was become something that people were starting to take a much closer look at because of the availability of hardware and operating systems that allowed them to use C. It is not that C was not available previously, but it was used by a different class of developers, the ones with S-100 Bus machines running CP/M of some form.. these are machines that often required you to re-target the BIOS from source when you add more RAM.<p>C also became the default language for Windows. For the Mac, it was a form of object Pascal at first, and then moved to C++ with MacApp.<p>This is an example of C being powerful enough, being at the right place and at the right time to where now it's the lingua-franca of system software.