1944
Harvard University President James Conant writes to IBM founder Thomas Watson Sr. to report that the Harvard Mark I was up and running smoothly. He also notes that the Mark I is “being used for special problems in connection with the war effort.”
1957
Bell Laboratories announces the development of magnetic tape machine capable of transmitting one thousand words per minute, sixteen times faster than a conventional teletypewriter machines.
1967
The spacecraft Surveyor 3 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida. It will become the second US spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon, where it will study the lunar surface and send more than 6,300 pictures back to Earth. In all, seven Surveyors will be sent to the moon. The photo to the right shows Surveyor 3 on the moon, as photographed by Alan Bean over two years after its landing.
1968
AT&T unveils an experimental telephone at its annual meeting in Boston. The phone is smaller, lighter, and largely electronic. It’s unveiling marks the beginning of the end of the rotary telephone.
1970
The Apollo 13 mission ends safely with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, four days after the spacecraft aborted its mission four-fifths of the way to the Moon. The shuttle was crippled when a tank of liquid oxygen burst. Upon his return, mission commander Jim Lovell becomes the first American astronaut to travel over 700 hours in space.
1977
On the second day of the West Coast Computer Faire, Apple Computer formally introduces the Apple II, Apple’s first popular microcomputer, shortly after the company’s one year anniversary. The computer features a 6502 CPU, 4KB RAM, 16KB ROM, a built-in keyboard, an 8-slot motherboard, game paddles, a color display, and built-in BASIC. Initial models feature cassette tape drives, but later models will include 5¼-inch floppy disk. It stands out from its major competitors by being the first personal computer to feature color graphics, and it is also the first product to carry the soon-to-be-famous rainbow striped Apple logo. Many historians would later mark this release as the beginning of the popularity of the personal computer, as the Apple II would be the first computer to boast a “killer app,” Dan Bricklin’s VisiCalc spreadsheet software. Price: US$1,298
1979
Knight-Ridder becomes the first US newspaper publisher to announce that it will undertake a videotex project. Videotex is an early information service, bearing a crude resemblance to the Internet. The program is called the Viewtron.
1981
Texas Instruments, Inc. introduces the Logo programming language to qualified school districts for the TI-99/4 home computer. It won’t be released to the general public until the Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in June.
1996
Toshiba releases the Libretto sub-notebook. With a volume of 821.1 cubic centimeters and a weight of just 840g, it is the smallest PC compatible computer ever released.
US Vice President Al Gore visits a high-tech mobile computer classroom called CyberEd. Following the visit, the truck leaves on a 122-day tour to rural regions to expose children to the “riches” of computers and the Internet. The tour is financed by a million dollar grant from the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, MCI, the Milken Family Foundation, Microsoft, DSC Communications Corp., and Corning, Inc.
1997
The Cyber Promotions website is hacked; its front page is defaced; and a password file is stolen.
Microsoft announces its intention to shut down the e-mail services of the Microsoft Network for 24 to 36 hours in order to make changes to effectively double the number of e-mail servers. Within days after the shut down, and the subsequent reactivation, a special sign-up offer is made to consumers.
1998
Raymond Torricelli, known by the handle “rolex”, hacks into NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) in Pasadena, California and uploads a rootkit. The rootkit allows Rolex to take control of computers used by NASA to perform satellite design and mission analysis for future space missions, and another used as an e-mail and internal web server. Rolex will use many of the computers to host chatrooms. In these chatrooms, he will invite others to visit a website where they can view pornographic images, from which he earns eighteen cents per visit. At the site’s peak Torricelli will earn approximately US$300-400 per week. At the time of the hack, until his arrest on July 12, 2000, Torricelli is the head of a hacker group “#conflict”.
2000
Aerial Images (www.terraserver.com), based in Raleigh, North Carolina, posts five recently released Russian spy satellite images of “Area 51″ on their website. Area 51 is a United States Air Force test site, formerly known as Groom Dry Lake Air Force Base, popularized by alien abuduction conspiracists. The photos were taken by a Russian satellite called Sovinformsputnik in 1998. By Tuesday, April 18, so many visitors will have hit the website to see the photos, that they will have to be removed until additional hardware can be installed to handle the volume.
US President William Jefferson Clinton visits East Palo Alto, California to inspire young children to get online during a two-day trip focused on extending the Internet into communities, homes, and schools.
The United States State Department reveals that a laptop computer that held classified information disappeared from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in February. According to Reuters, the computer may have contained “code-word information, a classification higher than top secret, including sensitive intelligence information and plans.”
2001
Version 2.1 of the Python programming language is released.
2002
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) unveils the Mobile Athlon XP 1400+ (1.2 GHz), 1500+ (1.3 and 1.33 GHz), 1600+ (1.4 GHz), and 1700+ (1.47 GHz) processors, featuring 200 or 266 MHz bus (1700+ is available only with 266 MHz). The processors are manufactured with a 0.13-micron technology, based on the processor core code-named Thoroughbred.
2007
The Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien is edited and released by Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien from his notes nearly ninety years after his father began work on the project. (ISBN-13: 978-0618894642) The book delves further into the history of the First Age of Middle-Earth, expanding upon a brief story that appears in The Silmarillion.
|
|
|
