Day in Tech History

1984 – Apple announced they would split up the Cupertino based company into three divisions – Apple II (handling all Apple III computers as well), the Apple 32 division (Lisa, and new Macintosh line of computers) and Accessory Products (Printers, keyboards, etc). Delbert Yocam led the Apple II group which Steve Jobs would take care of […]

Gateway computer makes a bold move and purchases rival eMachines for 50 million shares of Gateway common stock and $30 million in cash. eMachines was a company founded by Lap Shun Hui along with South Korean companies Korea Data Systems, and TriGem. Their strategy was to put a PC in every house starting at $399. […]

Google owned Motorola Mobility for only 2 years before deciding to sell it off. They chose to sell to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. A major change in the $12.5 billion acquisition they made in 2011. But of course that was after Google striped the company down a little and sold items like their cable modem […]

1984 – One billion points on one quarter. That was the reason for Tim McVey Day. At the Twin Galaxies arcade back on January 17th, Tim scored 1,000,042,270 points on one quarter to the game “Nibbler” – a hybrid Pac-Man and Centipede game. McVey got his name in Computer Games Magazine for it, and so he […]

2006– Founded in 1851, Western Union was responsible for getting the important messages from point A to B. Whether through telegram or commercial messaging, Western Union was synonymous with the service. But on January 27, 2006, that all ended. As Western Union wrote: “Effective 2006-01-27, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. […]

2006 – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a game that changed perception of the industry. The grit and cruelty of the GTA franchise has not only brought controversy, its also brought the fans. One bit of controversy was the “Hot Coffee” minigame within GTA. Hot Coffee was a euphemism for sex. In the minigame, the […]

1881 – Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison establish the Oriental Telephone Company of New York and the Angle-Indian Telephone Company Ltd. These companies were licensed to sell telephones in other countries such as Greese, Turkey, India, Japan, China and more. Countries recieving phones would have 3-digit numbers, which changed to 4, 5, then finally 7. […]

1948 – At IBM world headquarters, IBM dedicated the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC). The machine – otherwise known as Poppa – was the first computer to combine electronic computation with stored instruction. The 13,500 vacuum tube computer contained 21,000 relays. The 1,800 square foot computer room had a large glass window so the public could […]

1896 – Although he was not the only person to be working on the technology and not the first X-ray, Wilhelm Roentgen gave the first public lecture and demonstration of his device. He photographed Dr. Albert von Kolliker’s hand at the Wurzburg Physical Medical Society. The first X-ray he ever took was of his wife’s hand (with […]

1998 – Microsoft reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice regarding Internet Explorer on Windows 95. In the agreement, computer manufacturers could have the IE link removed. This was a small step in the antitrust suit against Microsoft and using bundled software and drive out competition. The Microsoft antitrust trial would begin on May […]

1981 – While getting this up to 88 miles per hour doesn’t take you back in time, it was still a cool car to have. The First production Delorean DMC-12 was built. A prototype was made back in 1976 and all Deloreans were made in Ireland. 9,000 Deloreans were made before financial issues got to […]

1885 – Sounding like anything but a roller coaster, the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway was the first American designed amusement coaster designed by LaMarcus Adna Thompson. Only 5 cents to ride, the Switchback was a simple coaster that took you about 600 feet to the next tower at six miles per hour. It had a height of […]

Happy Birthday to me. 1983 – at an introductory price of $9995, Apple introduces the Lisa computer – the first computer with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). The computer featured a 5 MHz 68000 microprocessor, 1 MB RAM, 12″ monochrome monitor, dual 5.25″ 860 KB floppy drives, a 5 MB hard drive and more. Lisa […]

1983 – During the CP/M Show, Franklin Electronic Publichers revealed the Franklin Ace 1200 computer. The main feature of this computer (like the other Franklin computers before) was the fact they copied Apple’s ROM and operating system code. The Ace 1200 came with a Zilog Z80 processor a 1 MHz, 48K RAM, 16K ROM,2 – 5.25 […]

2012 – Yahoo! had some turbulent times from 2007 when founder Jerry Yang was CEO. Of course the big debacle being the Microsoft bid, which took over 9 months to settle with Carl Icahn being a major instigator. Add to that the 2007 incident of the arrest of Shi Tao and Yahoo’s stance. Tao was arrested for […]

1956 – The U.S. Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was disclosed to the public. SAGE is a computer that connected hundreds of radar stations in the US and Canada as a one-stop monitoring of the sky. SAGE was commissioned and developed by MIT. The project started in 1950 and SAGE became fully operational on June 26, […]

1990 – AT&T suffers the oddest outage nationwide. A switch in New York crashed, then rebooted. This caused the other switches linked to the New York switch to also reboot. The cascade continued on until all 114 switches were rebooting on 6 second intervals. The continued failure lasted for 9 hours, leaving 60,000 customers without long […]

1973 – Elvis is broadcast via satellite to over 1 billion viewers in over 40 countries. That is, except for the U.S. because Superbowl VII was being played. The U.S. finally got to see the concert on April 4, 1973 on NBC. The show, entitled “Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite”, cost $2.5 million to produce. Presley […]

2000 – Microsoft CEO Bill Gates announces he will be stepping down from his role but remain on the Board and embrace a new role as Chief software architect. Steve Ballmer will take over the CEO role and also remain president. Love him or hate him, Ballmer kept Microsoft running and helped raise annual revenues. Ballmer would […]

1966 – Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson entered our lives via ABC on Wednesdays. The television series “Batman” debuted with the episode Hi Diddle Riddle. Each half hour episode contained either part 1 or part 2 of the dynamic duo’s fight against the criminal of the week. Get Batman: The Complete Television Series (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray] […]