1915
The first wireless message sent from a moving train to a station is transmitted, marking the beginning of mobile communications.
1932
The Neutron subatomic particle is first described in an article in the journal Nature by James Chadwick, who coined the name after he discovered it by bombarding Beryllium with alpha particles. In 1935, Chadwick will receive the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery.
1956
Doug Ross of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) presents a paper on gestalt programming at the Western Joint Computer Conference in Los Angeles, California. Ross had experimented with gestalt programming while working for the US Air Force and Emerson Electric Company. Read more about Doug Ross at Boston.com.
1958
In response to the launch of Sputnik, the United States Department of Defense issues directive 5105.15 establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The directive charges the agency with the “direction or performance of such advanced projects in the field of research and development…” Among ARPA’s highest priorities is the development of computer technology. Visit the official DARPA website.
1973
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is introduced as a standard for the transfer of files between networked computers.
1979
Pluto moves inside the orbit of Neptune for the first time since either planet was discovered.
1981
The private plane of Stephen Wozniak crashes during take-off, near the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. The accident leaves him with a loss of short-term memory for over a month.
1983
Atari seeks a legal injunction against Coleco Industries to prevent the company from selling its ColecoVision adapter to play Atari cartridges.
1984
Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Bruce McCandless II makes the first untethered space walk using the jet-propelled Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). (STS-41-B) Visit the mission’s official website.
1985
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office drops the case against Sysop Tom Tcimpidis for lack of evidence and in the “interests of justice.” Tom Tcimpidis had previously had his system seized for a posting of a pactel card code without the sysop’s knowledge.
1994
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Lower Decks” first airs. (No. 715) In it, several of the ship’s junior officers vie for the next big promotion, but the one choose is asked to undertake a dangerous mission into Cardassian space. Memory Alpha entry
1997
Apple Computer completes its acquisition of Next Software for US$427 which began February 4. Visit an archived version of the NeXT website.
Microsoft announces that it is ceasing the development of Windows NT for systems using PowerPC processors.
1998
The website of Dynatek InfoWorld is hacked by “TechVoodoo Crew”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2000
At 10:15am Pacific Standard Time (PST), a 16 year old Canadian hacker, “Mafiaboy“, carries out a distributed denial of service attack (DoS) with a one gigabit per second flood of IP packet requests from a network of “zombie” servers. As a result, Yahoo goes offline for over three hours. Two days, later the same attacks continue, this time targeting Amazon, Buy.com, CNN, eBay, E*Trade, MSN, and ZDNet. After pleading guilty, Mafiaboy will later be sentenced to eight months in a youth detention center.
At the International Solid State Circuits Conference, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) demonstrates an Athlon processor operating at 1.1GHz. Intel demonstrates a prototype 1GHz Pentium III processor. Visit the official International Solid-State Circuits Conference website.
2003
The chess match between Garry Kasparov and Deep Junior 7 in New York ends in a draw, with Kasparov having won the first game, Deep Junior having won the third game, and the other four games ending in draws. The match is the first competition between a man and a machine sanctioned by FIDE (World Chess Federation). Deep Junior was programed over ten years by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinksy of Tel Aviv. It is capable of evaluating three million moves a second, fifteen moves deep.
Two hackers who broke into a California court’s computers in order to electronically dismiss a
variety of pending cases plead guilty to the crime. Both William Grace, 22, and Brandon Wilson, 28, were sentenced to nine years in jail after pleading guilty to 72 counts of illegally entering a computer system and editing data, along with seven counts of conspiracy to commit extortion.
2005
The International Solid-State Circuits Conference is held in San Francisco, California. At the event, International Business Machines (IBM), Sony, and Toshiba reveal specifications for the Cell processor, intended for use in the next-generation PlayStation console. The Cell will feature a 64-bit IBM Power processor and eight processing units each capable of handling a separate set of tasks. The processor is expected to run at speeds faster than 4GHz, process 256 billion calculations per second, with the ability to transfer processor data at up to 100GB per second. Visit the official International Solid-State Circuits Conference website.
2007
ICANN reports that its root nameserver had become the target of a massive denial-of-service attack conducted by anonymous hackers along with servers managed by US Defense Department and UltraDNS.
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