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 Edgar Bergan show was not that great). Because of this, they didn’t know this was a fictional […]

2013: If you grew up in the 80’s, you knew what an IBM PC was. Even in the 90’s and 00’s, the PC was what you had in the corner of the house to do homework on, surf the internet, work out expenses and more. William C. Lowe was the man that brought that all […]

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 2008. In 2000, he started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Interestingly enough, 30 years later in […]

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. Of course, a recent report mentioned that Apple could now buy Dell if it so inclined. Windows Azure launches […]

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 cone into J.R’s brain, which would allow him to mentally control the PC. Sig Hartmann resigns from Commodore Sony […]

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 introduced. It was developed by Vadem Inc for $2,195. The computer was an MS-DOS computer with modem and four icon keys. phone, clock, […]

1995 – The Federal Networking council officially coins the term Internet: the Council’s Committee on Computing, Information and Communications (CCIC) created the FNC on Sept. 20th, 1995 to act as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies.From nitrd.gov Resolution: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term “Internet. […]

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 Job’s health, they pushed it up as much as possible. 2001– Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod. Little did we know what that […]

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 for the 7th kernel update. It was release to Manufacturing (RTM) a few days prior – meaning the final code […]

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 would be a dominant computer to IBM until it’s fall in 1992. the Electronic Communications Privacy Act goes into Law Windows […]

1985 – The first Blockbuster opens it’s 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-wide franchise and online movie and game rental store. Dish Network ultimately purchased Blockbuster for $228 million The Last Blockbuster […]

A lot happened on this day that Thomas Edison was responsible for. In 1878, Edison brought electricity into the home. 1879 Edison manufacturers the first incandescent light bulb, which was tested on October 22nd. Two major leaps in the technology ago. But it was on October 18, 1931, Edison died of complications to diabetes in New Jersey. His […]

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.  The chip would be released, but most people wouldn’t see the processor until Spring of 1986Interesting enough […]

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 Alice’s Wonderland. In 1986, the name was officially changed to the Walt Disney Company. Steve Jobs was a shareholder and board member. Walt Disney […]

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 Mbps (It didn’t hit speeds of 16 Mbps until 1989), and worked over standard phone wiring. Using terminated BNC cable, Token Ring created […]

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 were experiencing with XMODEM and Kermit file transfers. ZMODEM could provide high performance and reliability over packet switched networks while preserving XMODEM’s simplicity. It made XModem and YModem […]

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 Assisted Network System Designed to Facilitate Buyer-Driven Conditional Purchase Offers.” The two sites come to terms in 2001, in where Microsoft pays a fine. Microsoft tries to […]

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 including optical storage disk, voice recognition, and object-oriented languages. The system came with the NeXT STep operating system and cost $6,500. NeXT computer sold around 50,000 […]

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 software was released under their company name “Software Arts”. It was developed for the Apple II computer with 6502 assmebler.  Only […]

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, but finally made it to North America in 1980. Toru Iwatani developed the game with a nine-person team. The game […]

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 corporation was pretty big back in the day – giving your Apple II connectivity to the world. […]

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 – after all Apple Computers is in the computer business and Apple Records was in the music making business. Nonetheless, the […]

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 size and no faster in speed.However, the transistor counterpart was cheaper, took less power and created less heat. IBM went on […]

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 what he would do with Apple. He came back in saying: “I’d shut it down and give the […]

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 second on this event (Osama Bin Laden death was 5,000). Vigils were held in his memory and Cupertino office […]