1759
The British Museum, in London, England which will one day become the world’s oldest public national museum, opens to the public. It was established on June 7, 1753 when Parliament acquired the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, who had, in his will, offered his collection of 71,000 articles and specimens to the government for a requested £20,000 to be paid to his heirs.
1889
The Columbia Phonograph Co. is organized by Edward D. Easton, who has acquired the rights to market a treadle-powered graphophone. However, despite his intentions, Columbia will become better known for selling its music, beginning with cylinders of the United State Marine Band under the direction of John Philip Sousa. In 1890, Easton will publish the first record catalog, a one-page list of cylinders from Columbia and Edison.
1907
Dr. Lee De Forest is issued a patent (US No. 841,387) for the three-element vacuum tube, which he describes as a “device for amplifying feeble electric currents – such, for example, as telephone currents.”De Forest will announce his device to the public on October 20, 1906 at a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in New York City.
1924
The first play specifically written for radio broadcast, A Comedy of Danger by Richard Hughes, is broadcast by the BBC.
1968
Ralph Baer becomes the inventor of the video game when he applies for a patent on his television video game system. In 2006, he will receive the National Medal of Technology.
1960
The black and white anime film Three Tales becomes the first anime ever broadcast, when it is aired domestically on the NHK channel in Japan. The film consists of thee short stories and runs for thirty minutes.
1962
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 1012 tape punch.
1969
AT&T agrees to sell its public teletypewriter exchange services to the Western Union Telegraph Company. AT&T will retain its private teletypewriter services.
The first docking of two manned spacecraft takes place between the Soviet Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5, which together form “the world’s first space station,” crewed by four cosmonauts. The two craft remain docked for four and a half hours, the duration of three orbits around the Earth. During the docking, two cosmonauts switch ships, becoming the first men to return to Earth in a different spacecraft than the one in which they they left the atmosphere.
1976
The US-German Helios B solar probe is launched into solar orbit.
1984
Bill Gates and Steven Jobs sign an agreement to rescind their original Macintosh applications contract, allowing Microsoft to market it products in competition with Apple.
1986
The Cinemax and HBO cable services begin scrambling their national satellite feeds on the Galaxy 1 communications satellite, using the Videocipher II system.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) opens the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, a national center for high-performance computing research. At the Center, Marc Andreesen will write the Mosaic browser as a student there. Visit the official NCSA website.
1987
Paramount Home Video announces that, for the first time, one of its video releases will be preceded by a commercial. The commercial will be a thirty second Diet Pepsi spot, and the film it that it will be released with is Top Gun. By including the commercial, Paramount will be able to sell the video for US$3 less because of the revenue paid by Pepsi.
1990
The Alien Nation episode “The Spirit Of ‘95″ first airs. (No. 13) In it, Newcomers lobby for the right to vote, but a series of violent kidnappings blamed on Purists disrupt the election.
The AT&T long-distance network suffers a nationwide cascade switching failure. A switch in New York crashes and reboots, causing its neighboring switches to crash, then their neighbors’ neighbors, and so on, until 114 switches are crashing and rebooting every six seconds, leaving an estimated sixty thousand people without long distance service for nine hours. A bug in the newest release of the software controlling AT&T’s 4ESS long distance switches causes the system’s computers to crash when they receive a message from a neighboring machines that the neighboring machine has recovered from the very same crash it is causing by transmitting a recovery signal. Engineers resolve the issue by reloading the software’s previous release. Rumors immediately begin to circulate that the system crash was triggered by hackers, and these rumors lead to a nation-wide crackdown on hackers that will begin three days later. The investigations and subsequent arrests that result from the crack down, which will be documented in the book The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling, will be referred to as “Operation Sundevil“. Read The Hacker Crackdown online.
Tor Books releases the fantasy novel The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan as a hardcover. (ISBN 0-312-85009-3) It is the first book of The Wheel of Time (WoT) series. Visit the author’s official website. Length: 688 pages
1993
Richard Page, co-founder and hardware chief of NeXT Computer, resigns from the company.
1996
Kaleida Labs, Inc., a joint venture between Apple Computer and International Business Machines (IBM) for the purpose of developing the SCRIPTX multimedia programming language, is wholly absorbed by Apple Computer.
1997
America Online (AOL) suffers an outage through about half of its system from 3:45pm to 7:30pm EST. The crash is traced to an interface board in a router which manages the flow of data in the network. It is the second major outage experienced by AOL within six months.
Class action lawsuits are filed against America Online (AOL) alleging that the company made fraudulent and malicious misrepresentations regarding their service. The first suit, seeking US$20 million, is filed at the Superior Court of the State of California in Los Angeles. It alleges that AOL promised unlimited access to their service under newly offered pricing structures, but that the company was unable to provide unlimited service following a surge in demand from AOL members. In response to the suits, AOL announces that it will spend US$250 million over the coming months to expand its service capacity and increase its staff by twenty-five percent. Later in the day, two more suits are filed by New York law firms.
Texas Instruments (TI) announces that it will withdraw from the Intel-compatible processor market.
1998
Over two hundred military sites (.gov and .mil) hosted on servers operated by the Pentagon are hacked by two teenagers, “Makareli” and “TooShort”, from the Cloverdale Highschool computer labs in California and their friend, an Israeli hacker named “Analyzer”. According to the Pentagon, the never damaged any files, but their exploits constitutes the most extensive attack ever uncovered. And all of it was done for the simple joy of the experience.
1999
Former United States Court of Appeals Judge, Robert Bork, publicly voices the opinion that Microsoft should be divided into three autonomous operations at the concluding of the Microsoft antitrust trial.
The magazine Business Journal reportsd that the real estate firm Legacy Partners Commercial, Inc. has paid about US$106 million for the four-building campus which was built in the early eighties for Atari at 3200 Zanker Road in San Jose, California. Atari never occupied the campus, but it was sold to Warner Communications and then to Ford Motor Company. The transaction is called one of the largest “valley” investment deals of the year.
Scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, announce that they have invented a device that reads brain waves through the skull to enable paralyzed people to write sentences on a computer screen.
Universal Studios releases the science fiction horror film Virus, directed by John Bruno and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, William Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, and Joanna Pacula, to 2,018 US theaters. It is based on the Dark Horse comic book of the same name written by Chuck Pfarrer. In it, the crew of an American tugboat boards a top secret Russian research vessel in order to shelter from a typhoon, but they discover that it has been infected by an alien entity that regards humans as a virus that must be eradicated. Produced on a budget of US$75 million, it will gross US$6,013,640 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: R Running Time: 1 hr 40 mins
2000
The website of the University of Limerick is hacked by “TCD”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
Curador steals over 23,000 credit card numbers from 8 small companies
An eighteen year old hacker from rural Wales named Raphael Gray, using the handle “Curador”, steals an estimated twenty-six thousand credit cards numbers from eight e-commerce websites, including Loxinfo’s e-commerce site (http://www.shoppingthailand.com). He will post the numbers on the Internet in February. After ex-hacker Chris Davis tracks him down, he will be arrested on March 23, 2000 and charged under the United Kingdom’s computer crime statute. Read a brief interview with Curador at PBS.
Microsoft announces a limited-time promotional price of US$59.95 for the forthcoming Windows Millennium (ME) Operating System to home users replacing either Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition. The product is scheduled to be released Thursday, September 14. The introductory price for existing Windows 98 users will remain valid through Monday, January 15, 2001.
2001
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 600MHz Mobile Duron 600 and the 700MHz Mobile Duron 700 processors, featuring the 64KB level-2 caches and 200MHz front-side buses.
The Andromeda episode “All Great Neptune’s Ocean” first airs. (No. 110) The Castalians come aboard to negotiate the final charter for the New Commonwealth, but, when their leader dies, Tyr becomes the chief suspect in the murder.
Indiana University’s School of Music is hacked, and Social Security numbers are stolen.
Intel announces plans to acquire Xircom, Inc., a manufacturer of mobile computing hardware, for US$748 million. Xircom has 1,900 employees worldwide, and the company reported revenue in excess of US$492 million over the past year. Visit the official Xircom website.
Wikipedia, the open content Wiki encyclopedia, is launched. It will rapidly become one of the most popular references on the Internet. Visit the official Wikipedia website.
2002
Bandai releases Mobile Suit Gundam: Zeonic Front for the PlayStation 2 in the US. ESRB: T (Teen)
Sony releases the Clié PEG-S360 handheld computer, the successor of the PEG-S320, featuring 16 MB RAM, Palm OS 4.1, a Memory Stick port. Price: US$199
Sony releases the Sony Clié PEG-T615C handheld computer, the successor to the PEG-N610C, featuring 16MB RAM, Palm OS 4.1, a Memory Stick expansion slot, a USB connection, and a universal remote control. Price: US$400 Weight: 6 ounces
The top-level domain (TLD) .name begins resolving.
2003
Capcom releases the survival horror game Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for the GameCube in the US. ESRB: M (Mature) Price: US$39.99
MandrakeSoft Linux of France files for bankruptcy protection. Mandrakesoft will operate under bankruptcy protection from January 27, 2003 to March 30, 2004. However, despite its efforts to cut its losses and improve profits, Mandrakesoft will be forced to file for protection due to a series of quarterly losses.
2005
The European Space Agency (ESA) SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements including aluminum, calcium, iron, and silicon on the Moon. Visit the official SMART-1 website.
2007
Nintendo releases WarioWare: Smooth Moves for the Wii in the US. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB : E10+ (Everyone)
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