Day in Tech History

2000 President Bill Clinton signs the Child Internet Protection Act into law. The law is implemented to set rules for the web to expose them to pornography and sexual content. In 2003 the law will b

1996 Steve Jobs started Apple. When he left Apple, he started NeXT. When Apple started to fall, Steve Jobs came back. Of course, having 2 computer companies is not a good idea So why not buy it ou

1974 Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) puts out the first ever Do it yourself Altair 8800. You would get it through Popular Mechanics Magazine, then assemble it yourself. This is

1926 The term Photon is coined. Of course a photon is the basic unit of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation. Newton Lewis is the one who coins the term. HTML 4.0 is published

1989 The first full episode of the Simpsons airs on FOX TV network. 21 years and 1 movie later, the show still continues on strong. The cast stayed pretty much the same since 89. The Simpsons starte

1994 Although its only been in mainstream news for a couple years, the Large Hadron Collider has actually been around for many years now. On this day, for example,

1995 At the turn of the Internet age, researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation, led by Paul Flaherty, Louis Monier and Michael Burrows, created a web crawler and indexer algorithm. The web progr

1994 The World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C) held its first meeting at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Albert Vezza and

1982 After a decent success of the Atari 400/800 line the company noticed the console was looking a little old. After all, the Atari 400 actually discolors upon UV light. The 400s non-tactile key

1980 Apple Computer goes up for their Initial Public Offering and makes a statement in the market. Using the symbol

1967 The Concorde was a British and French venture. It wa the first supersonic airliner. The prototype (Concorde 001) was rolled out to 1100 present. British technology minister Anthony Wedgwood Ben

1993 20 years ago, a Shareware copy was uploaded through a server at the University of Wisconsin (and although I was going to school there at the time, it wasnt me HONEST). The end result was the

2002 The trial of Jon Lech Johansen, better known as DVD Jon, begins with Johansen pleading not guilty. DVD Jon has been a pioneer in Reverse engineering. O.K, so that is a fancy way of saying

2004 It was an interesting day in the Tech community when we heard the news. IBM was getting out of the desktop and laptop markets and focus on server and infrastructure. They started by selling all

1978 It is one of the most infamous pictures in tech today. This is the Microsoft crew. Can you guess which one is Bill Gates? The picture was updated in 2008 when the group (except Bob Wallace, who

1768 Encyclopedia Britannica began publishing the first print otherwise known as part I. It was the brain child of Colin Macfarquhar, andAndrew Bell, and was a conservative reaction to the Fre

1965 Richard Wexelblat was the first candidate to complete his doctoral dissertation, hence giving him a degree in Computer Science. It was presented at the University of Pennsylvania Moore Scho

1985 The Cray X-mp/48 Supercomputer begins operation in San Diego Supercomputer Center in California. The $15 million dollar supercomputer could process 400 megaflops (200 per processor). It was a s

1981 For many years, whenever something came out, it was IBMs Data Processing Division releases Well, on Dec 3rd 1981, IBM decided and announced that the Data Processing Division was going to be

1991 What was first a Multimedia add-on for System 6, Quicktime has spent 21 years being Apples proprietary player. The original version contained graphics, animation and Video codecs What was re

2013 Jeff Bezos is interviewed on the show 60 Minutes on CBS with Charlie Rose. During his interview he unveils a project Amazon has been working on Flying drone delivery. This secret R&D projec

1959 Want to see a 2.9 million dollar computer? That was the IBM 7090 a transistorized mainframe computer that was designed for scientific research and tech applications. It replaced the 709 serie

1972 Andy Cappas tavern in CA was the site for the first Pong game was wheeled into the establishment. The coin-operated game was put in by Atari co-founderNolan Bushnell and game designerAl Alco

1983 To counter IBM, Tandy releases the Tandy TRS-80Model 2000 computer. It housed the 80186 processor and 128 KB of RAM. There were 2 720 KB floppy drives and the MSDOS Operating System. The pr

1998 Sega releases their next generation console the Dreamcast in Japan. It didnt get released in the US until Sept 9 1999, but it was one of the more successful console launches of its time.T

2001 One problem with technology is that you hit limitations, mostly due to materials used or how small machines can make parts like transistors. For instance, todays multi-core x86 processors will

2002 While in Bankruptcy since the following September, Roxio along with the Private Media Group came in and took over the $2.43 million dollar company. They took all logos and names and rebrand

2008 After a long court battle with the Santa Cruz Operations (SCO) group, a judge rules that Novell is the owner of UNIX and UNIXWare copyrights. In 2003 just after SCO changed their name from Ca

1889 Congratulations to the first commercial jukebox which was installed in San Francisco, CA. It was called the Nickel-in-the-Slot, and played wax cylinder records. Within 6 months it would earn

1994 The Sega Saturn is released featuring 2 28.6 MHz processors running 32 bit. It had 2 video display processors, QSound surround and 2 MB of memory, with 1.5MB of video memory. It went for 44,800

2008 Some watched in horror. Others watched thinking it was a joke. Still, Abraham Biggs was a troubled teen. He decided to end it all and do it in front of a live audience. He got on Justin.tv and

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