1927
Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) goes on the air, with forty-seven radio stations. The radio network will lose a substantial amount of money in its first year, and on January 18, 1929, Columbia Records will sell the network to a group of private investors headed by William S. Paley, a Philadelphia cigar manufacturer, for four hundred thousand dollars.
1947
National Security Act goes into effect. The act, in part, creates the Central Intelligence Agency, the country’s first peacetime intelligence agency.
1948
BBC Television transmits the first documentary film made especially for television, Robert Barr’s Germany Under Control.
Columbia Records publishes the first catalog of Long Playing (LP) record releases.
1959
Vanguard 3 is launched into Earth orbit.
1964
The comedy series The Addams Family premieres of the ABC network in the US. It is based on the characters in Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons. It will run for two seasons, for a total of sixty-four episodes. TV.com episode
1974
The British government officially approves a two-year trial of the BBC’s Ceefax and ITV’s Oracle teletext systems. Ceefax, an interactive data service carried through cable television, is one of the forerunners of the internet.
1977
The robotic space probe Voyager I takes first photograph of Earth and the Moon together. Read more at NASA’s website.
1980
Soyuz 38 carries two cosmonauts to the Salyut 6 space station. One of the two cosmonaut, Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendez, becomes the first person of color and the first Latin American sent into space.
1983
Release 18 of the Infocom interactive fiction game The Witness for personal computers is published. It is Infocom’s seventh game. The game takes place in Cabeza Plana, a quiet (and fictitious) suburb of Los Angeles, California in February 1938. Freeman Linder, a local millionaire, has begged the police for protection from a man named Stiles. The player’s character is a detective assigned one evening to check out the wealthy man’s claims.
1984
Software Arts, founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, and VisiCorp, one of the earliest software publishers, settle their lawsuit over VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet application. The sixty million dollar lawsuit was originally filed by VisiCorp, which had taken over distributing and marketing VisiCalc, against Software Arts, which had initially developed the product, alleging that Software Arts had failed to upgrade the product to maintain its competitive edge. Software Arts filed a countersuit alleging that VisiCorp had failed to market the product effectively. The terms of the settlement are never disclosed to the public.
1986
Motorola announces the Motorola 68030 microprocessor. It incorporates about three hundred thousand transistors.
Release 4 of the Infocom interactive fiction game Moonmist is published for personal computers. It is Infocom’s twenty-second game. In the game, the player is a young detective, asked by friend Tamara Lynd to investigate her new home of Tresyllian Castle in Cornwall, England. Tamara has recently become engaged to the castle’s lord, Jack Tresyllian. She was very happy until she began seeing what appeared to be The White Lady, a ghost who has allegedly haunted the castle for centuries. As if seeing a ghost wasn’t nerve-wracking enough, she’s also begun to fear for her life. Is Tamara’s imagination just overly excited from living in a large old castle, or is someone really trying to kill her? And if her life is in danger, is it from a ghost or someone using it as a disguise?
Square releases the scrolling shooter King’s Knight for the Famicom in Japan. The game follows the same storyline as many roleplaying platform games. Princess Claire has been kidnapped in the Kingdom of Izander, and the player must train to defeat the Evil Dragon and rescue her. Visit the game’s official website.
1987
Hacker access AT&T computers, stealing US$1 million worth of software.
Microsoft’s stock splits for the first time.
Release 221 of the Infocom interactive fiction game The Lurking Horror is published for personal computers. The game was written by Dave Lebling and inspired by the horror writings of H.P. Lovecraft. The game follows a student trying to finish a term paper at G.U.E. Tech, a large University. The player has braved a snowstorm to travel to the school’s computer lab to work on the report. The document is now mangled beyond repair, however; with the help of a hacker, the player finds that the file has been partially overwritten by the Department of Alchemy’s files (the title of the Department of Alchemy is a reference to a well-known hack at MIT, which several of Infocom’s founders attended). Although the game begins as a quest to try to salvage the term paper, alarming events soon unfold, revealing a powerful evil within the school’s depths. Visit the game’s official website.
1989
NeXT releases the NeXTstep OS. It is a Unix operating system based on the Mach kernel, featuring some source code from BSD Unix. It will eventually be bought by Apple and used in its next generation OS, Rhapsody.
The science fiction television series Alien Nation premieres on the FOX network in the US with the episode “Pilot“. In it, as resentment toward the Tenctonese Newcomers builds, Matt Sikes and George Francisco investigate a string of murders that appears to be the work of a giant, insect-like creature. The series is based on the movie of the same name. It is one of Fox’s first dramatic series, and it will develop a large fan base. However, due to the fledgling network’s financial difficulties, it will only run for one season of twenty-two episodes. IMDB listing
1990
NeXT releases the NeXTstation, a high-end workstation computer, one year after the introduction of the NeXTstep OS. The system feature a 25MHz or 33MHz Motorola 68040 processor, an FPU Motorola 68882 math co-processor, the new 25 MHz ‘40, 2.88 MB floppy drive, a 105 MB hard drive, 8MB RAM, and a monochrome monitor. Read more at Old-computers.com. Visit the system’s official website. Price: US$4,995
NeXT releases the NeXTcube with the same configuration as a NeXTstation Color that it is compatible with a 32-bit video board that will allow it to display 16.7 million colors in Adobe’s Display Postscript. Price: US$7,995
NeXT releases the NeXTstation Color with a sixteen monitor capable of 4,096 colors, and 12 MB RAM. Price: US$7,995
1992
id Software releases the first-person shooter Spear of Destiny for personal computers. It is the prequel to id Software’s first person shooter Wolfenstein 3D. In it, the player assumes the role of allied spy B.J. Blazkowicz, on a mission trying to recapture the Spear of Destiny from the Nazis after it was stolen from Versailles. Visit the game’s official website.
T&E releases Soft 3D Golf Simulation Waialae Country Club for the Super Famicom in Japan.
1993
The animated television series Sonic the Hedgehog premieres on the ABC network in the US as a Saturday morning cartoon with the episode “Heads or Tails”. It is based on the video game franchise of the same name. In it, Sonic and Tails race to Robotropolis in search of metal cotter pins in order to ward off an impending invasion by Robotnik’s Buzzbombers. It will run for two seasons for a total of twenty-six episodes.
Eight games by Sierra On-Line for the Macintosh cause the system to lock-up, due to a time-related algorithm bug.
1995
Version 2.0 of the Netscape Communications web browser is released. This version features support for Java applets and a full mail reader called Netscape Mail, transforming Netscape into an Internet suite for the first time. Both the browser and the suite will be known as Netscape Navigator. AOL will soon begin bundling their software with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to compete. Visit the application’s official website.
1997
Capcom releases the fighting game Street Fighter Collection for the Sega Saturn.
1998
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is formed as a California non-profit corporation to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government. Visit the organization’s official website.
Microsoft announces that 1.5 million upgrades of Windows ‘98 have been sold since it was released Thursday, June 25. To date, Microsoft owns eighty-five percent of the market for Personal Computer (PC) operating systems.
Sega of Japan announces that Virtua Fighter 3TB and Sega Rally 2 will be developed as “arcade perfect” adaptations for the forthcoming Dreamcast system.
2001
The Nimda computer worm infects the internet, spreading though emails, and it is able to infect websites by attacking Microsoft IIS network servers. It’s combination of attacks makes it one of the quickest spreading worms yet observed.
Sony announces the Clie PEG N760C handheld computer, featuring the 33MHz Dragonball VZ, a built-in digital audio player, the Palm OS 4.1, and a 65,536-color display. The unit will be available in October, replacing the Clie PEG N710C. Price: US$500
THQ releases the first-person shooter Red Faction for Windows. Red Faction takes place on Mars in the 22nd century. The player controls a miner named Parker who helps lead a rebellion against the Ultor Corporation. The premiere feature of the game is its “Geo-Mod” technology, short for “geometry modification”, which allowed the player to destroy certain sections of the scenery in the game. For example, instead of opening a door, a player could blast through the rock surrounding the door. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)
2002
Eidos Interactive releases the real-time tactics game Commandos 2: Men of Courage for the Xbox in North America. The game places the player in command of a squad of commandos and various allies as he sneak behind enemy lines to accomplish his objectives. The action stretches from 1941 to 1945 and takes place on both the Western Front against the Germans and the Pacific theatre against the Japanese. ESRB: T (Teen)
Intel releases the 2000MHz Celeron 2.0 processor, featuring a 128 Level-2 Cache and a 400MHz Front Side Bus for the low-end consumer market.
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Shockwave, Part II” first airs. (No. 201) In it, a group of Suliban take over Enterprise, while Archer tries to return to the 22nd century. Memory Alpha entry
2003
Email users are swamped by a new fast-spreading computer virus circulating through email that purports to be security software offered by a Microsoft advisory, but it actually tries to disable security programs that are already running. The worm, dubbed “Swen” or “Gibe,” takes advantage of a two-year-old hole in Internet Explorer and affects systems that have not installed a patch for that security hole.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues the iMesh filesharing social network for copyright infringement. The two parties will settle on July 20, 2004. According to the RIAA, the terms of the settlement were that iMesh would pay them US$4.1 million and would migrate to a pay service. Visit the official iMesh website.
2006
Gabitasoft Entertainment releases Hyperball Racing for personal computers. PEGI: 12+
Nintendo releases Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team for the Nintendo DS and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team for the Game Boy Advance in the US. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: E (Everyone)
2007
The purchase of Club NEVERDIE by Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs for US$100,000 inside the Entropia Universe is entered into the 2008 Guinness World Records book for the “Most Expensive Virtual World Object.” Read more at MarketWire.
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