Day in Tech History

1981 Microsoft goes through a restructure to incorporate in Washington. Bill Gates would become president, Paul Allen was Executive Vice President. Steve Ballmer would come on full-time with a $50,0

2008 Nokia announced they have purchased Symbian outright. They originally owned 46% of the company, and bought out the remaining 54% for $410 million. But then the company turned around and created

1983 Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel run the first successful test of the distributed Domain Name System (DNS). This automated process was to take over failing Arpanet and CSnet protocols because th

2009 Kodak announced they would ended the production of Kodachrome color film. Once the leftover film is distributed, there will be no more made. That lasted until December, 2010. Kodak created thei

1948 What was first expected to be a practical use computer, the SSEM, or Small-Scale Experimental Machine became the first stored-program computer. Basically, it stores program instructions into it

2014 Microsoft and Google agree to the Kill switch technology. In a California bill SB-967, Smartphones built after July 1, 2015 will consist of a hardware or software option to kill the phone. Fu

1984 Jim Gettys and Bob Scheifler announced collaboration of a new operating system in the X Window System. This gives the basic framework for a GUI. Currently, it is refered to as X11, R7.7. Ive s

2007 Terry Semel was under pressure by the board because of dissatisfaction of his compensation. Terry was brought in to create a partnership with Hollywood, which really didnt happen. He handed t

1885 Arriving in over 200 crates, the Statue of Liberty is fully delivered to New York City. French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, along with Gustave Eiffel, created this statue for America to

1997 Several computer companies banded together to help create the NetPC. A disk-less computer that got all information, including install from a corporate server or the Internet. Basically, these

2014 After a major protest from #FreetheNipple, Facebook decided to adjust their stance on photos of breastfeeding mothers. Facebook implemented the initial ban on December 30, 2008. The new rule be

1938 It is one of the geekiest days for people like me. Creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster introduced one of the comic heros in Action Comics. Interesting enough, Superman was suppose to be a bad

1993 Microsoft teamed up with Tele-communications and Time Warner to start the revolution known as Interactive TV. The ability to buy product right through the set during a show. iTV would give us

1997 Back in February, it was announced thatUS Robotics be acquired by 3Com Corporation in a $6.6 billion stock swap. This would add to 3Coms computer networking company against Cisco as they woul

1980 Otherwise known as The 24th Man (to join Microsoft, that is), Steve Ballmer came on as Microsofts first Business Manager. He made only $50k and stock options. Of course 30 years later, Steve

1998 Seiko introduces the worlds first wearable PC watch called the Ruputer. It was marketed under the OnHand PC name. The Ruputer had a 3.6 MHz processor and 2 MB of non-volitile storage. The 102

1986 The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center opens. It links 5 supercomputer centers together Princeton, San Diego, Illinois, and Cornell University.PSC is a leading partner in theTeraGrid, theNat

2001 To compete with AOL, Internet Service Providers NetZero and Juno Online Services announce they will merge to become United Online. The company would eventually acquire other assets to keep aflo

1975 Sony releases the first home videocassette recorder inthe US. Japan first saw the Betamax on May 10, 1975, which was not uncommon. The magnetic tape media was the first to be on the market, as

2005 Steve Jobs spoke in front of the masses at the WWDC announcing that Apple will switch their processors from PowerPC to Intel. He then showed off the Mac OS X running on aPentium 4 CPU. The reas

1983 Coleco announced at the Consumer Electronics Show the Coleco Adam. It was their first attempt at a computer hybrid system gaming and desktop computing. The $725 price tag didnt hurt, either.

1896 Henry Ford gets ready to test drive the first Quadricycle (a.k.a. Car). Only one problem They didnt make the garage door big enough. Out comes the Ax A couple chops and a wider door was cr

2009 Intel introduces the Nehalem Core i7 processor, code-named Lynnfield. The i7-950 and 975 models are 4-core processors with a speed of 3.06 GHz. The processor ran 64-bit instruction set and co

1988 While not the first version of the PS/2, the Model 70 was introduced with the 80386 processor. 16, 20, and 25 MHz clock speeds. The Model 70 also used a 25 MHz Intel 486 processor in a complex

1979 Intel released the successorto the 8086 processor in the Intel 8088 chip. With a clock rate of either 4.77 MHz or 8 MHz, this 16-bit chip had an external bus of 8 bits and 29,000 transistors.

2006 Swedish police raid the host of the Pirate Bay BitTorrent. On the same day, the Pirate Bay political party increased their numbers by 500, with an additional 930 joining the following day. The

1987 North American Phillips Company introduced the compact disc video format. Using the same technology as LaserVision, the CDs with Pictures would be gold in color and the same size as an audio

1999 Believeinkids.com became the five-millionth domain name in the world. At the time, a domain name cost $70 for the first year, $35 a year thereafter. The domain name was abandoned and is still a

2014 Rumors flew high on this one, so when it happened, many people were not surprised. Apple announced they were going to acquire Beats Music and Electronics in a $3 billion deal. As part of the ac

2003 Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created a Fork of B2/cafelog. From there, WordPress was born. Since its release, WordPress has taken over Content Management Systems (CMS) with its ease of use an

1998 At the beginnings of the AMD / Intel battle, AMD brought out a processor to dual with Pentium II. The AMD K6-2 processor was a Super Socket 7 pin structure, which also was compatible with olde

1999 A program first developed by Brigham young University for Data General minicomputers, WordPerfect was the word processing application for anyone using a computer in the 80s and 90s. I remembe

1985 Quantum Computer Services was founded. Technically, it was a reorganization of Control Video Corporation, a company that started in 1983. The company was selling online service Gameline to Ata

1995 MySQL releases their SQL database program for web pages. This is known as a Relational Database Management System(RDBMS). MySQLuses C and C++, the SQL parser used yacc and a hybrid of lexer c

1973 Robert Metcalfe writes a thirteen-page memo describing a new type of data transmission method. His memo was entitled Ether Acquisition, which would connect Hawaiis ALOHA Network. Alto Ethern

2001 Apple released the Mac OS X Server, based on Rhapsody, which was a hybrid of NeXT OPENSTEP. The server ran file services, Macintosh Manager, Quicktime Streaming Server, WebObjects, NetBoot and

2013 In a $1.1 billion deal, Yahoo acquired the blogging site Tumblr. This caused many concerns for those using the service especially those who curate blogs with pornographic content. However, Ya

1999 Sixteen years after Return of the Jedi, George Lucas finally moves his vision forward with Star Wars: Episode I the Phantom Menace. The story of young Anakin Skywalker and how Obi-Wan Ken

2001 The computer animated movie Shrek hits theaters. The 90 minute movie was produced on a $60 million budget and although its first weekend only saw $42 million , the overall theatrical run bro

1902 The Antikythera mechanism was found off the coast of Greece. They only found a part of it, and wasnt really sure what it did. Eventually, this device was declared to be the oldest known analog

1965 The Campbell soup company, under their Franco-American brand, introduce SpaghettiOs pasta in a can. The ring-shaped pasta and cheese blend was an easy way (and less messy) to make the kids a m

1940 The first Corporate McDonalds restaurant opened in San Bernardino, CA by Richard and Maurice McDonald. Speedee was the mascot back then a hamburger-chef that was poised upon the McDonalds s

2011 Hackers took down the Sony Playstation network on April 20th, 2011. Around 77 million accounts were comprimised and gamers couldnt play online for over a month. On May 14, Sony started bringin

1987 Version 1.0 of the Turbo C programming language is released. It offers the first integrated edit-compile-run development environment for the C programming language forIBM-compatible personal c

1936 When typewriters first came out, many different people worked on keyboard layouts to become the standard. QWERTY was a popular systembut was not efficient. August Dvorak and William Dealey dec

2011 Eric Schmidt shows off the new Google Chrome OS but with an added feature as he introduced Google Chromebook a personal computer with the Google Chrome OS built-in. The device loads straight

2001 TAT-14, the Transatlantic cable begins commercial service. A dual, bi-directional ring configuration using Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplex (DWDM) Sixteen wavelengths of STM-64 per fiber p

2014 Foursquare tried to re-organize and turn into a review-based app more than a check-in app. They moved the check-in over to a new app called Swarm. Because of this, they froze all mayorship sp

2006At a press conference before E3, Sony announced the Playstation 3 gaming console. This would be for a November 17 release and would feature items like Bluetooth wireless controllers, Wi-Fi and H

1967 Video game developer Ralph Baer plays the first two-player video game. Fox and Hounds was a game where the fox (a red dot) was chased by the hounds (white dots). The controller were two knobs