Day in Tech History

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

2004 A free raster graphics editor, Paint.NET was created and released by Rick Brewster as a school project at Washington State University. The software was released under the MIT License and was at

1999 In an effort to fix some minor issues, improve USB support and upgrade Internet Explorer, Microsoft launched Windows 98 SE (Second Edition). The upgrade version also improved WDM audio and mode

2008 After months of bid negotiations and Yahoos Jerry Yang saying No, Microsoft decided to take their $50 billion dollar offer off the table. Although Microsoft pulled the offer, it was not the

2000 Up until May 1, all GPS signals were scrambled for protection. President Bill Clinton announced they would be turning off the Selective Availability(SA) because it didnt propose a greater thr

1965 Intelsat I, a.k.a. Early Bird, went into service. This geosynchronous satellite sent the first signal between nine different countries. A One Hour TV Spectacular was broadcast to Europe from

1993 You may see www, but its true meaning is World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee wrote WorldWideWeb during the 1990, while working for CERN. He did it on a NeXT Computer and developed it for the NeXTS

2004 Google files the S-1 form with SEC for their IPO. They said they wanted to raise US$2,718,281,828; aMathematicalalgorithmbased on the day they filed. The form can be found at SEC.gov The sto

2003-Apple launches the iTunes Store. iTunes has been around since 2001, but without option to get new music. Before the iTunes store, users would have to burn from CD or copy previously made MP3 files. The store sold 1 million songs within a week.

1998 Using AOL chat, a sign language interpreter and an active audience, a female gorilla named Koko answered questions to the public. Koko resides at the Gorilla Foundation and with a vocabulary of

1983 The Trash-80, as it was so admirably called in the day, a.k.a. the TRS-80 Model 4 is introduced. It contains a 4 MHz processor, 16 KB of RAM, a cassette interface, Keyboard and Monochrome monito

1980 Activision was technically founded in 1979, but it wasnt until April 25 that the Fantastic Four joined up as the first third-party software company for video games. David Crane and Alan Mill

1984 Apple introduces the Apple IIc, their answer to a portable machine. It weighed 7 1/2 lbs and featured a 1.023MHz CPU and 128 KB RAM. $1,295. The device device had a built-in floppy and peripher

1964 The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) is retired after fifteen years. SEAC was the first to use all-diode logic. SEAC was bason on EDVAC. It had 747 vacuum tubes, and the clock rate wa

1993 The National Center for Supercomputing Applications releases version 1.0 (RTM) of the Mosaic Web Browser. It was the first browser with a Graphical user interface for content. Marc Andreesen an

1977 Two days prior, Microsoft send MITS a letter with theallegationthat they were not up on royalty payments and if they didnt catch up, MITS would be in breach and the 8080 BASIC would be pulle

2009 Oracle announces they have purchased Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion dollar deal. This includes stock at $9.50 / share. That would also be the acquisition of SPARC processors, Solaris OS, Ja

2000 Before smartphones, Personal Digital Assistants were the device to have. You could store contacts, write memos, set up, read and send email and even play a nice game ofSolitaire, or the game wh

2006 Toshiba launches the HD DVD format in the US. The first HD DVD players were the HD-A1 and HD-XA1. RCA would rebrand the A1 to the HDV-5000. The first HD DVD with TrueHD soundtrack was the Phant

2000 Five arial images of Area 51 are leaked onto Terraserver from a Russian satellite called Sovinformsputnik. The amount of traffic that went to the site brought the server down, so they had to t

1977 Apple Computer shows off the Apple II home computer at the West Coast Computer Faire. The $1,298 Home machine featured a 6502 processor, 4kb RAM 16kb ROM and for the first time A home compute

2005 It was the release of the Damn Small Linux program, a Linux distribution that was designed to take up as little drive space as possible. John Andrews DSLs developer Never allowed the ISO t

1996 Nineteen year old Jennifer Kaye Ringley takes several webcams and places them within her house. For the next seven years, she would livestream her life to all on the Internet. Since Ringley was

1965 You may have heard about Moores Law. This states that every 18 months, a processor will double in speed. The laws name is coined after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore. He said: It cant conti

1976 What a position Ronald Wayne was in. He was the 3rd co-founder of Apple Computer on April 1 with 10% share. However, after two weeks Wayne sells his share for $800 back to Steve Jobs and Steve W

2009 Susan Boyle takes the Stage at Britians Got Talent. A person that most would write-off at first glance, sings I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables. Once she was done, the 48 year-old Scot

2003 Sony Blu-Ray players hit store shelves for the first time. The BDZ-S77 was the first model, but didnt sell too well because of the $3800 price tag attached to it. Add to it no movies available

2012 Facebook trying to get a hold on photosharing decides to not wait for their iPhone app to come out but instead purchase Instagram for 1 billion dollars ($300 million and 23 million shares o

1983 John Sculley, who was president of PepsiCo at the time, decides to leave to become president and CEO of Apple Computer at request of Steve Jobs. Sculleys campaign of the Pepsi Challenge was

2008 Intel launches their newest processor: the ATOM processor. Its codename was Silverthorne. It is a ATOM Z single processor using the 45 nm die processes (the processor was smaller than a penny).

1968 2001: A SpaceOdysseyactually premiered in Washington DC on April 2nd, New York and LosAngleson April 4th. It was April 6th that was the major theatrical release date for the US. This Stanle

1995 The program is called the Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks. But you may call it SATAN. The Perl written program Written by Dan Famer and Wietse Venema was released to help

1975 Paul Allen and Bill Gates founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, NM. The company was founded there simply because that is where Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) is located. The duo

1973 Martin Cooper made the first handheld cellular phone call in public. Walking down the streets of New York, Cooper the General Manager of Motorolas communication system division talked on t

1987 IBM releases a flurry of new items on this day. The most notable was the IBM PS/2 Their first 80386 system using a 3.5 floppy (720kb or 1.44 MB discs), MFM hard drive, PC-DOS and OS/2. Multip

Watch out today, as the internet becomes a bevy of fake information. The joke telling pre-dates the internet, but since the world started connecting online, the hoaxes have gotten not only more elaborate, but more fun. Did you know that John C.

2008 Dan Kaminsky announced he has been in contact with Microsoft over a flaw in the DNS naming system. At this time, there were no other details as to keep this issue as secret as possible while th

1993 The graphics software labs at AT&T closed down and relocated to the AT&T Multimedia Software Solutions. The division focused on software products that included 3D vector based graphic programs

1982 The first completely computer animated video wins an Academy Award for best animated short film. Tin Toy by Pixar (now a division of Disney) was an animated short film about atoy named Tinny

1979 At 4 PM EST, the nuclear reactors in Middletown, PA (Dauphin County) experienced a partial meltdown. The incident was officially rated a 5-of-7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale: Acciden

1982 Recorded in 1981, the song Pac-Man fever was a song by (Jerry ) Buckner & (Gary) Garcia. Each song on the album was about a different video game and was released via album, cassette, 8-track a

1976 The First Annual World Altair Computer Convention is held at the Airport Marina Hotel near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bill Gatesopens the convention with his position on software piracy. Of cour

1994 Microsoft released Excel 4.0. It included an Easter egg animation of the Excel logo crushing the numbers 1-2-3. Other Day in Tech History items: AOL and eBay cross marketing agreement Excel 4.0

1802 A patent for the first steam engine was issued to Richard Trevithick and Andrew Viviane. The machine was called the Puffing Devil or Puffer. The engine could produce 145 psi to push the car

2001 Its called the Deorbit Space Station Mir was a controlled re-entry into the Earths atmosphere. Ultimately, the space station burned up over the ocean by New Zeland. Some parts of Mir coul

1981 The first vinyl video record, a.k.a. the videodisc, hit stores in the U.S. The Capacitance Electronic Disc looked just like any other vinyl record protected in a plastic caddy and held 60 min

2006 Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass launch Twitter (a.k.a.Twttr) with Jacks first Tweet. Just setting up my Twttr went across the network of only a few followers. Similar t

1916 Albert Einstein sent a paper off to Annelen Der Physik. The paper was called Die Grundlage der Allgemeinen Relativitatstheorie translated as The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativ

1997 Toshiba a member of the DVD consortium put out the first consumer DVD player on November 1, 1996 in Japan as the SD-3000. After some initial changes (and having to change the DVD region cod