William C. Lowe, who supervised the creation of IBM’s first personal computer, a technological touchstone that he insisted — and proved — could be conceived, engineered and manufactured in a single year by a company not known for speeding products to market, died on Oct. 19 in Lake Forest, Ill. He was 72.

The cause was a heart attack, his daughter, Michelle Marshall, said.

Apple and other companies had been selling personal computers for several years when IBM began looking for ways to get involved in the business in the late 1970s. The company had long dominated corporate and government mainframe computing by using proprietary software and in-house production. But it was hardly nimble, and its leaders believed it would be left behind if it took its typical years to reach production.

In 1980, Mr. Lowe, who had joined the company as a product test engineer in 1962, right after college, pitched an improbable idea: He would form a team that would build a personal computer in a year. How? The team would bypass IBM’s proprietary development model and instead use parts and software made by a growing industry of outsiders. Even IBM seemed surprised when, a year later, the company pulled it off.

On Aug. 12, 1981, the company introduced the IBM Personal Computer, also known as the 5150. It used an operating system called MS-DOS 1.0, made by a little-known company from Washington State named Microsoft. It ran on an Intel 8088 microprocessor and cost $1,565, not including a monitor.