868
The earliest explicitly dated printed text is printed. The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture, is a sixteen foot scroll with six sheets of text printed from wood blocks and one sheet with a woodcut showing the Buddha with disciples and a pair of cats. The sheets measure 12 inches by 30 inches and are pasted together. The book will be dated by a colophon at the end stating that the book was “made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong.” The scroll was one of about 1,130 bundles of manuscripts that will be found a thousand years later, walled up in one of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in Turkestan.
1927
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded.
1928
Radio station WGY 810 AM, in Schenectady, New York, begins broadcasting America’s first regularly scheduled television broadcasts. The programs run from 1:30pm to 2:00pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays with twenty-four line resolution. Most of the viewers were on the technical staff at nearby General Electric, which had designed the system and was using the broadcasts to refine its equipment. A handful of hobbyists who had built their own television sets were also able to watch. Those who tuned in had to make constant adjustments, turning two knobs at once to keep the blurry picture discernible on their three-inch square screens. By the end of the year, seventeen other stations around the country will begin scheduling broadcasts, intended to test the apparatus rather than to attract viewers.
1948
William “Willy” A. Higinbotham of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is issued a patent for the Electronic Squaring Circuit, originally built for a radar bombsight. (US No. 2,441,387)
1949
The first Polaroid camera is sold in New York City for for US$89.95.
1951
Jay Forrester files a patent application for the matrix core memory.
1953
Twentieth Century-Fox reduces the aspect ratio of CinemaScope from 2.66:1 to 2.55:1 and the sprocket holes (nicknamed “Fox holes”) are slightly smaller than the conventional Bell & Howell perforations to allow for four magnetic-stripe sound tracks (left, right, centre and surround). Exhibitors accept the need for new lenses, costing US$2,875 a pair, but not for re-equipping for multi-track audio.
1955
The film Revenge of the Creature, the first sequel to the classic monster movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, is released to US theaters. The film is notable as being the only sequel to a 3-D film also shot in 3-D. It is also first screen role for Clint Eastwood, who appeared as an uncredited lab technician early in the film.
1979
Harvard MBA candidate Daniel Bricklin and programmer Robert Frankston give the first demonstration of VisiCalc at the West Coast Computer Faire. The application was conceived in1977 by Brickman. The original protypes were written by Dan and Bob on a borrowed Apple II computer. VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet software, is the program that makes a business machine of the Apple II and proves to be the original “killer app” for early personal computers. VisiCalc (an amalgam of the words visible calculator) automated the recalculation of spreadsheets. One hundred cells were re-calculated in about twenty seconds. A huge success, more than one hundred thousand copies will be sold in the first year.
1984
A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.
1987
The first heart-lung transplant takes place in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Rusty n’ Edie’s BBS goes into operation in Youngstown, Ohio. Operators Russell and Edwina Hardenburgh grow the system from a single line to over a hundred lines (and computer systems). In 1993, the system will be busted by the FBI for piracy, and Rusty will later be pulled into a landmark lawsuit for distributing scanned Playboy photos.
1992
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “I, Borg” first airs. In the episode, The crew of the Enterprise captures a member of the cybernetic race known as the Borg. During the course of the interactions which follow, they begin to rethink their attitude towards the Borg.
1993
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates approves a plan by product manager Russ Siegelman to create an online service and include it as part of the next Windows release. Code-name during development: Marvel
1995
In New York City, more than 170 countries decide to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.
Scientists confirm that Ebola, one of the world’s deadliest viruses, has broken out in Zaire. The outbreak, in the city of Kikwit, has killed about fifty people, including three Italian nuns who had cared for victims.
Sega of America begins shipping the Saturn video game system in the US. Thirty thousand units are shipped to 1,800 Babbage’s and Software, Etc. and Toys ‘R Us stores for the initial launch, with ten game titles available in all. Sega begins a US$50 million marketing campaign to promote the system. The system is designed around a pair of 28.8 MHz 32-bit microprocessors and a parallel processing architecture. Price: US$349, or US$399 with VirtuaFighter
The trade magazine Video Game Advisor, which will later be re-named GameWeek, is introduced.
Thursday, May 11 through Saturday, May 13, the first Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is held in Los Angeles, California as a first-of-its-kind industry show. The show takes its name from Electronic Entertainment magazine. At the expo, 350 game companies show 1,300 games for video game systems and personal computers. Total attendance is 28,000. Atari announces a price cut to US$149 for the Jaguar system, and makes a splash demonstrating its Virtual Reality product for the Jaguar. Nintendo announces delays the release of its Ultra 64 system to April 1996 or possibly later. SNK demonstrates the US$500 NeoGeo CD system.
At the E3 show in Los Angeles, California, Sony Computer Entertainment America unveils a four million dollar booth to promote the new PlayStation gaming system and hosts a surprise appearance from Michael Jackson. Sony’s president, Steve Race, announces the launch date of the PlayStation as September 9, with a retail price of US$299. Threatened by Atari’s claim that Sony may be dumping product in the United States, SCEA’s decision was to alter the US version so that it did not have an S-Video adaptor built-in. The technical change differentiated the machine from the one selling in Japan for $320.
1997
Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, gives up the sixth and final game against IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer after an hour and nineteen moves. It is the first time a computer beats an international grand master in a multigame match.
1998
Apple Computer announces that one million copies of QuickTime 3.0 have been downloaded from its website.
In a survey of 3,002 persons conducted by Pew Research Center twenty percent of the people in the United States go online for news at least once a week. This figure translates into 36 million people, as a random sample.
Richard Miller, president of VM Labs in Los Altos, California, hosts a telephone conference to reveal a bit more about Project X, their forthcoming answer to platform-based home gaming and entertainment. According to Miller, Project X is an all-in-one solution for digital-based hardware manufacturers such as makers of DVD players, digital satellite receivers, televisions, etc. Their one-chip replaces MPEG-2 architecture at little or no added cost to the hardware manufacturer.
Sega Enterprises reveals that they will formally announce their new machine on Thursday, May 21. The new machine, code-named Katana, is not expected to be available to consumers until sometime in 1999.
1999
The official White House website (www.whitehouse.com) is defaced by “Global Hell”.
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Radio.
2000
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is held May 11, through Saturday, May 13 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. Visit the event’s official website.
At the E3, Sega announces that it will reduce the price of the Dreamcast video game system by US$50 to US$149 and include with it a free SegaNet subscription.
2001
The Solaris/IIS worm infects Solaris boxes up to version 7, and then scans for IIS machines susceptible to the folder traversal vulnerability and then replaces the default web page with foul language.
Working Designs releases Silpheed: The Lost Planet for the PlayStation 2 in Europe.
2004
Atari releases Transformers for the PlayStation 2 in North America. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)
In Los Angeles, California, Nintendo unveils the Nintendo DS handheld video game system, featuring an ARM 9 3D processor, an ARM 7 2D processor, a dual backlit 3-inch LCD screens, a DS compact card slot, a GBA cartridge slot, a wireless 16-player local communications, 802.11b wi-fi connectivity, a D-pad controller, face and shoulder buttons, a touch screen with a stylus, headphone and microphone jacks. Nintendo also announces that it’s working on a new console code-named “Revolution”. Visit the official Nintendo DS website.
In Los Angeles, California, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) unveils the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld video game system, featuring dual 333MHz MIPS R4000 processors, 32MB RAM, 4MB embedded DRAM, a 4.3-inch diagonal 16:9 wide screen backlit 480×272 pixel TFT LCD 16 million color display, a 1.8GB Universal Media Disc (UMD) drive, a Memory Stick Pro Duo slot, a USB 2.0 slot, 802.11b wi-fi connectivity, a D-pad controller, face and shoulder buttons, an analog joystick, headphone and microphone jacks, a USB 2.0 slot, a Memory Stick PRO Duo slot, an IrDA infrared sensor, stereo speakers, and a lithium-ion battery. The system is scheduled for release in Japan in December and in the US in March. Visit the official PlayStation Portable website. Weight: 260 grams
Sony reduces the price of the PlayStation 2 in the US from US$179 to US$149.99. Visit the official PlayStation website.
2005
The AOL Mail (also known as AIM Mail) free webmail service is goes public. Accounts each have a 2GB storage limit. Visit the official AOL Mail website.
Sony releases firmware version 1.51 for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in Japan. Visit the official PlayStation Portable website.
2006
Version 3.9 of the OpenNTPD is released. OpenNTPD is a Unix system daemon implementing the Network Time Protocol to synchronize the local clock of a computer system with remote NTP servers. Visit the official OpenNTPD website.
Version 10.1 of the SUSE Linux open source operating system is released. Visit the official Open SUSE website.
The video game developer Core Design is acquired by the independent development studio Rebellion, including all Core Design staff and material assets but not the brand name. Core Design is best known for creating the Tomb Raider games, but Eidos retains the rights to that franchise.
|
|
|
Comments are closed
