Day in Tech History

2013 AOL shocked a lot of geeks when they announced WinAmp.com would be shutting down and the software would be no longer available come December 20th. The next day rumors surfaced that Microsoft w

1993 The Ionizer Otherwise known as Michael Elanky, recieved 28 months in prison for posting bomb-making instructions on his BBS. There have been other instances of this throughout history, but El

1894 The first Sunday Comics section is printed by the New York World. 1985 91 years later, Bill Watterson syndicates a comic about a boy and his stuffed Tiger. Calvin and Hobbes will bring laught

2008 After battle upon battle between Microsoft, Google and shareholders (including Carl Icahn), Jerry Yang finally announced to all he was stepping down as CEO of Yahoo! The previous days, Steve Ba

1977 Most of the time, we skip over movie releases, unless it has had a definite impact on the Tech and geek community. That is the case with this movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Directe

1971 Intel announced the 4004 microprocessor in an ad in Electronic News Magazine. Intel called it a micro-programmable computer on a chip, this was the first single-chip processor. It was also conc

During the 80s and 90s, there was a little show called COMDEX. It stood for Computer Dealer Exhibition. For a while, there were 2 versions: The Spring COMDEX (Alternating for a while between Altanta

2006 In February 14,2005, 3 former Paypal employees started a website that let you upload and share your video. YouTube brought a new idea of putting your creations on the internet. However, their

2002 Gary McKinnon has been in the news ever since his arrest. Back in 2002, he hacked into networks run by NASA, the Pentagon, along with other military bases around the US. He claims he was on a h

2005 In an effort to curb piracy, record companies began putting copy protection on the CDs themselves. The electronic marking would cause CDs to error out if they tried to copy. Unfortunately th

1983 Windows 1.o was announced at the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York City. It was one of the most elaborate product introductions to date. Gates says Windows 1.0 will officially release in 1984,

2004 Mozilla launches the web browser that would finally give Internet Explorer a run for its money. Firefox 1.0 web browser was created by Mozilla, who broke free from the Netscape Navigator brows

1993 Microsoft releases the OS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 which is the last big release before Windows 95. It was built to connect better with Windows NT for businesses. It also had updates to im

2000 It was a time that would be known as when the Bubble burst. The event technically happened on March 10, 2000. Since that time, dot com-ers began losing their sites and livelihood. Although Pet

1995 3DFX releases the much anticipated Voodoo 3D acceleerator. QuakeGL becomes the first game using the Voodoo 3D. Hi-resolution rendering was its advantage. 3Dfx would continue to make the VooDoo

1999 It was over 12 years that we saw Microsoft go through the Department of Justice over Monopoly issues. US district Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued a 207 page Findings of fact on this day. I

1984 Michael Dell launches his new business of IBM compatible PCs from his dorm in Austin, TX. The idea was to sell a philosophy over a product. The philosophy was to sell direct to customize to th

1999 Real Networks admits to collecting data without telling users with their software program RealJukebox player. When the issue was brought up by a competitor, Real apologized and issued a patch t

1931 E.I. DuPont announces to the world they have come up with a new substance that is a Synthetic rubber called DuPrene. Made from Acetylene, salt and rubber, this combination would eventually be r

Intel announced in 1995 the next generation processor the Pentium Pro. Unlike the Pentium, the Pentium Pro was a chip designed for 32-bitarchitecture, so Windows 95 and Windows NT could run true.

The paper was called Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto. It was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This was a roadmap to the creation of the crypto-currency, whic

1938 Orson Welles shocks the nation with radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. A large number of listeners who tune into the program ten minutes late (because the singer on the

2013: If you grew up in the 80s, you knew what an IBM PC was. Even in the 90s and 00s, the PC was what you had in the corner of the house to do homework on, surf the internet, work out expenses and

1955 William Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates has a son. William Gates III was born in Seattle, WA. Bill Gates, of course, went on to start Microsoft. Bill was CEO of Microsoft until he retired in 2

1999 Dataquest, a company that monitors PC sales, has shown a trend that Dell had maintained a 5% lead over Apple for 2 consecutive quarters. Therefore, Dell had become #1 in computer sales for 1999

1998 A Georgia man became the first person that ran a computer controlled by thought. The subject (known as J.R.) was paralyzed due to stroke. Dr Roy Bakay and Dr. Phillip Kennedy implanted a glass

1984 The Osbourne Vixen debuted. Inside was a ZILOG Z80a processor, with 64k RAM and the CP/M OS. Other programs included Wordstar, Supercalc and M-Basic. All this for $1,498.The Encore was also intr

1995 The Federal Networking council officially coins the term Internet: the CouncilsCommittee on Computing, Information and Communications(CCIC) created the FNC on Sept. 20th, 1995 to act as a fo

2011 Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson was released on Kindle and iBookstore, with a full release at Midnight. The book was planned to be released a lot later. However due to Jobs health, they pushed i

2009 Microsoft released not only the Windows 7 Operating system, but also Server 2008 R2 (as mentioned on the Windows 7 team blog). Although there are many versions of Windows OS, Windows 7 stood fo

1949 -An Wang files a patent for magnetic core memory using ferrite. It was entitled pulse transfer controlling devices. This was the first sign and the rise of Wang industries a company that woul

1985 The first Blockbuster opens its doors in Dallas, TX by David Cook. The 29 year old store owner eventually sold it to Scott Beck, John Melk and Wayne Huizenga. Eventually it becomes a nation-wi

A lot happened on this day that Thomas Edison was responsible for. In1878, Edison brought electricity into the home.1879Edison manufacturers the first incandescent light bulb, which was tested on O

1985 Intel released the 80386 DX processor. The 275,000 transistor chip was a big jump from the 20 MHz 286. It contained the ability to address up to 4 GB of memory and had a bigger instruction set.

1923 90 years ago, Walt and Roy Disney start what is known as the Walt Disney Company. It started as the Disney Brothers Cartoon studio. Walt Disney created a short film entitled Alices Wonderland.

1985 IBM announced, with co-developer Texas Instruments, the Token Ring network along with PC Network software six months ahead of schedule. The Token Ring only did network transmission speed of 4

1986 Telenet funded a project to develop an improved public domain application to application file transfer protocol. This protocol would alleviate the throughput problems their network customers we

1999 Priceline filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and its Expedia travel service. The suit outlined how they violated U.S. patent number 5,794,207, Method and Apparatus for a Cryptographically Assist

1988 Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. Steve Jobs shows off the NeXT Computer featuring the Motorola 68030 microprocessor at 25 MHz. The computer introduces several new features incl

1979 Visicalc is released by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. The spreadsheet application is called the first killer app for personal computers. It turned the PC from a hobby to a business tool. The s

1980 The video game that changed it all debut in North America. The infamous yellow pie chart gobbling up little dots and avoiding ghosts for top scores was released to the Japanese arcades in May, b

1998 We all remember the modem, right? Dial into the internet through an ISP? Some of you may still have that technology, but if you have dealt with modems for a while, you remember Hayes. The Hayes

1991 The second lawsuit of Apple vs. Apple was settled: Apple computers vs. Apple records (the Beatles label). The suit was about producing music. Of course there was a fine line between the lawsuit

1954 IBM created the first calculating machine to use solid-state transistors. This was the first nail in the coffin for vacuum tubes. The end result was a 2,000 transistor calculator no smaller in

1997 Gil Amelio just was just removed as CEO of Apple. People were calling for Steve Jobs to return, but others thought that would be a bad investment. At a Garner Symposium, Michael Dell was asked

2011 Steve Jobs passes away in his home at 3 pm Pacific. He went into respritory failure due to the pancreatic cancer he was fighting for over 10 years. Twitter exploded with over 10,000 tweets per s

Hewlett Packard came out with their first Programmable calculator in 1979. The HP-41c was the first to give alphanumeric display capabilities. It would actually tell you what to do (ex. ENTER RADIUS

This is an especially Geeky day, for not only in 1955was Captain Kangaroo and the Mickey Mouse Club debuting on CBS and ABC, but in 1964the first Buffalo Wings were made in Buffalo, New York. Hence

1997 MCI was under a bid to be purchased by British Telecommunications. Worldcom came in and outbid BT to snag up the company. What made this the coup de grace is it would make Worldcom the #2 teleco

1979 Activision was founded by four ex-Atari, Inc. game designers: David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead. They teamed up with Jim Levy to produce game cartridges for the Atari 2600