1477
William Caxton issues his first dated printed book in England, Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (”Sayings of the Philosophers). Caxton will produce approximately one hundred copies of the work.
1879
Eugen Skladanowsky presents the first public projection of photographs at the Floria Theatre in Berlin.
1894
The “New York World” published the first regular Sunday comic section.
1929
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin demonstrates a television receiving system called the Kinescope to the Institute of Radio Engineers in the US.
1951
See It Now hosted by Edward R. Murrow becomes the first live coast-to-coast commercial television broadcast in the US. The program will become well know for its high journalistic standards.
1952
The fifty millionth telephone in the United States is installed on the desk of President Eisenhower.
1963
Bell Telephone introduces the push button telephone for the first time ever. The phones are manufactured by Western Electric Manufacturing and feature ten buttons (not twelve) set into a round back so that they resemble the earlier rotary phones, and they are available for an extra charge to Bell System subscribers. The new push-button phones are first used in Pennsylvania.
International Business Machines (IBM) releases the IBM 1231 optical mark page reader.
1970
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates gets his start in computer programming at the Lakeside School in Seattle. The school owned some early computers and Gates and his friends spent nearly all their time on the machines. Time on Lakeside and other machines in the Seattle area was costly, however, so the newly formed Lakeside Programmers Group offered Information Sciences Inc. free programming services on its PDP-10 in return for free time on the computer. The group designed a payroll program for the company.
1977
A court decides that Microsoft is free to market BASIC to others. Within months, Microsoft will licenses BASIC for the Commodore PET and TRS-80 computers, and begins negotiating with other companies.
1981
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) releases the IBM 4321 processor, the IBM 4331 Model Group 11 processor, and the IBM 4341 Model Group 10 and Model Group 11 processors, which have twice the maximum main storage as the IBM 4341 Model Group 2 processors. IBM also releases the Small Systems Executive/Virtual Storage Extended, a simplified operating system for the IBM 4321 and IBM 4331 processors.
1982
The Amusement and Music Operators Association (AMOA) show is held Thursday, November 18 through Saturday, November 20 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. At the event, Atari introduces three new coin-operated arcade games Liberator, Millipede, and Pole Position.
1985
The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, is first syndicated. The strip will be syndicated until December 31, 1995. At its height, Calvin and Hobbes will be carried by over 2,400 newspapers worldwide, and more than thirty million copies of the eighteen Calvin and Hobbes compilations that will be printed. Visit the comic’s official website.
Release 24 of the Infocom interactive fiction game Enchanter is published. It is Infocom’s ninth game.
1989
Del Rey releases the science fiction novel Grumbles from the Grave by Robert A. Heinlein as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0345362462) The book is a largely autobiographical memoir. Length: 281 pages
1991
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “A Matter of Time” first airs. (No. 509) In it, a historian from the twenty-sixth century appears on the Enterprise, while they help a planet avoid a nuclear winter. Memory Alpha entry
1993
Atari releases the Atari Jaguar video game console in the US. Promoted as the “first 64-bit system,” the system features five processors residing in three chips, two of them, named Tom and Jerry, are proprietary and the third is a Motorola 68000 coprocessor, as well as 2MB RAM. The systems games are stored on cartridge which hold up to 6MB each. The system will be marketed with the slogan “Do the Math,” claiming superiority over competing 16-bit systems. Price: US$249.99
Capcom releases the platform game Mega Man 5 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in Europe.
Nintendo of America announces a six month pre-tax earnings drop of twenty-four percent. Visit the company’s official website.
1994
Oral arguments are heard in the David LaMacchia BBS Piracy Case, in which LaMacchia is accused of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud by running the pirate bulletin board system (BBS) “Cynosure” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a period of about six weeks. LaMacchia was indicted on April 7 in the federal District of Massachusetts for facilitating the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted software by other unknown persons. The government doesn’t allege that LaMacchia violated the federal copyright or computer fraud statutes or that he uploaded, downloaded, or transmitted any copyrighted material. Rather, the prosecution charges him with engaging in a criminal conspiracy to violate the federal wire fraud statute, which was enacted in 1952 to prevent the use of the telephone wires in interstate fraud schemes. The case raises significant issues concerning how the freedom of speech applies to cyberspace. It will be dismissed on December 29, 1994.
In San Diego, California, Nintendo holds the Nintendo PowerFest World Championships 1994 video game competition, over three days. Michael Iarossi of New Jersey wins the grand prize of US$5,000 and a new Ford Mustang car.
1996
The COMDEX trade show is held Monday, November 18 through Friday, November 22 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event features more than 2,100 companies demonstrating over 10,000 products, and 215,000 people from over 120 countries attended the event. At the event, Bill Gates announces Windows CE 1.0, a new operating system for the handheld computers to an audience of 1,500 people. Intel CEO and President Andrew Grove predicts that by 2011, Intel processors will integrate one billion transistors and operate at 10GHz and 100,000 MIPS. Visit the event’s official website.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) announces a US government approved encryption framework to secure data over the Internet. The system is called International Cryptography Framework (ICF). The system provides various levels of encryption strength, depending on government regulations in the US and importing countries. In some cases, ICF will allow US manufacturers to export the strongest encryption system approved for export by the US government to date.
A panel of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company experts announce industry awards to the founding fathers of the PC industry. Award winners include William D. Mensch, Jr. who was fundamental to the development of the Motorola microprocessor and the 6502 chip at MOS Technology, Chuck Peddle for the 6502 microprocessor and helped develop the PET computer at Commodore, Federico Faggin for the Z80 microprocessor, Masatoshi Shima and Ralph Ungermarm for the Z80 microprocessor, William B. Pohlman for the 8088 microprocessor, Tom G. Gunter for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, Jon Crawford for the Intel 80386, Bill Joy for the SPARC microprocessor by Sun Microsystems, Avtar Saini for the Pentium microprocessor. The awards are presented by Nolan Bushnell, Dan Bricklin, Gordon Eubanks, Jr., Rod Canion, Michael Slater, and Theodore Waitt.
1997
America Online (AOL) experiences a third major service brownout within a thirty day period, this time five hours in length.
Borland International, Inc. announces plans to acquire Visigenic Software, Inc. for US$130 million.
Cyrix shareholders approve a merger with National Semiconductor worth US$550 million.
Informix Corp., a Menlo Park, California publisher of database server software, blames “overly aggressive accounting” on the fact that the company had overstated revenues by US$278 million and earnings by US$236 million over the previous three years.
1998
Macy’s Department Stores holds a news conference in New York to unveil one of the largest Internet Shopping Web Sites ever created by an established retailer. Visit the retailer’s official website.
Nintendo announces a drop in semi-annual operating profits but announces that the new Legend of Zelda game for the Nintendo 64 is anticipated to improve the company’s financial situation a great deal when it is released.
Syquest Technology Inc. reveals that they have filed for bankruptcy protection and have reached a pending agreement to sell substantial assets including patents, intellectual properties, equipment, inventory, works-in-progress, raw materials, and parts. The buyer isn’t identified.
US District judge Ronald Whyte issues a preliminary injunction against the Microsoft Corporation giving the company ninety days to update Windows 98 and Internet Explorer to conform to Java programming language standards and to cease labeling its products that contain Java technology as being the “official” Java implementation.
2000
The Brazilian website of Derba is hacked by the hacking group “crime boys”. The hacked server had been running on Windows 2000. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2001
LucasArts releases Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader for the GameCube in North America. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: Teen (T)
Nintendo releases the GameCube video game console in North America. The system features a 128-bit custom 485MHz IBM “Gekko” PowerPC CPU, a 162MHz ATI Flipper graphics processor, 24MB 1T-SRAM, 16MB DRAM, a 16-bit Macronix DSP Sound Processor, and four controller ports. It is the Nintendo’s fourth game system. Visit the system’s official website. Price: US$199.95
2002
At the COMDEX trade show, Dell Computer unveils the Dell Axim X5 handheld computer, featuring a 300MHz Intel XScale processor, 32MB SDRAM, CompactFlash type II slot, a Secure Digital and MMC slot, 65,536-color transreflective TFT display, speaker, microphone, and Pocket PC 2002 operating system. Price: US$249 or US$349 (400MHz processor and 64MB RAM) Weight: 6.9 ounces
The Robot Fighting League forms, in an effort to standardize all the local robot tournaments taking place around the country.
Ubisoft releases the stealth-based game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell for the Xbox in the US. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)
2003
Apple Computer introduces an iMac with twenty inch LCD display.
Apple Computer releases new Power Mac G5 computers, featuring processors ranging from a single 1.66GHz to dual 2GHz G5 processors and a 80 or 160GB hard drive.
Atari releases the first-person shooter Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines for the Game Boy Advance. It is based on the film of the same name. ESRB: T (Teen)
Rockstar Games releases the horror game Manhunt for the PlayStation 2. The game, which will be well-received by critics, will be highly controversial because of the extremely graphic manner in which players kill their opponents. In the UK, the murder of a fourteen year old boy, Stefan Pakeerah, by his seventeen year old friend, Warren Leblanc would be blamed on the game’s influence. The incident would trigger a series of lawsuits by Pakeerah’s mother that would have social ramifications for years to come. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)
Square Enix releases Final Fantasy X-2 for the PlayStation 2 in North America. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)
2005
The Gen Con SoCal 2005 gaming convention is held November 18 -20 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. The event is attended by 6,326 people. Visit the event’s official website.
Namco releases the fighting game Soulcalibur III for the PlayStation 2 in Europe. It is the fourth overall installment in the Soul series. Visit the game’s official website. PEGI: 16+
Warner Bros. releases the fantasy film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, directed by Mike Newell and starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Brendan Gleeson, Robert Pattinson, and Miranda Richardson, to 3,858 US theaters. It is based on the novel of the same name by J.K. Rowling. Produced on a budget of US$150 million, it will gross US$102,685,961 domestically in its opening weekend. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 2 hrs 33 mins
2006
The Cray XT4 supercomputer is released.
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