Day in Tech History

December 11, 2018

December 12: Apple Initial Public Offering

1980 – Apple Computer goes up for their Initial Public Offering and makes a statement in the market. Using the symbol “AAPL“, Apple shares started at $22 – but sell out within minutes. By the end of the day, shares rose to $29. The market value became 1.8 Billion, which, in turn, made employees and investors pretty rich – Steve Jobs reports $217 Million, being the largest shareholder. It beat out Ford Motor when it went IPOV (IPO Viral). OSCAR I goes into orbit Christopher Cockerell patents the Hovercraft FidoNet #1 Hard drive failure Gawker.com is hacked and full email,...

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Day in Tech History / Geek

December 10, 2018

December 11, 1967: The Concorde Supersonic Airliner

1967 – The Concorde was a British and French venture. It wa the first supersonic airliner. The prototype (Concorde 001) was rolled out to 1100 present. British technology minister Anthony Wedgwood Benn coined it Concorde on that day. The last “e” would stand for excellence. The first flight would not happen until March 1969. creditcards.com hacked Google Chrome (Windows) exits Beta Martin Luther King Jr. lectures on science and technology Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe! Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS | More

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Day in Tech History / Geek

December 9, 2018

December 10, 1993: DOOM Released Unofficially

1993 – 20 years ago, a Shareware copy was uploaded through a server at the University of Wisconsin (and although I was going to school there at the time, it wasn’t me – HONEST). The end result was the beginning of the first-person shooter. For those who do not want to read the Doom Bible, the story is about a Marine who assaults a senior officer, therefore was incarcerated on Mars at the Union Aerospace Corporation. His job was to overlook the teleportation device.However, the device goes haywire and a whole bunch of creatures come out of the portal. The...

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Day in Tech History / Geek

December 8, 2018

December 9, 2002: Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon) Trial

2002 – The trial of Jon Lech Johansen, better known as “DVD Jon,” begins with Johansen pleading not guilty. DVD Jon has been a pioneer in “Reverse engineering”. O.K, so that is a fancy way of saying “Pirating”, but without his efforts, advances might not have been made. He was acquitted on January 7, 2003. Yahoo acquires del.icio.us (delicious.com) Microsoft launches Windows 2.01 and Oxite Bandai releases WonderSwan Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe! Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS | More

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Day in Tech History / IBM

December 7, 2018

December 8, 2004: IBM sells PC Division to Lenovo

2004 – It was an interesting day in the Tech community when we heard the news. IBM was getting out of the desktop and laptop markets and focus on server and infrastructure. They started by selling all their assets to Lenovo – China’s largest computer manufacturer. Lenovo wasn’t a household name in the US, but this pretty much changed that overnight.The deal was for $650 million in cash and $600 million in stock. Lenovo would also acquire $500 million in IBM liabilities, which would put the total to $1.75 billion. In return, Lenovo would instantly become the 3rd largest PC...

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Day in Tech History / Microsoft

December 6, 2018

December 7, 1978: Microsoft Staff Picture

1978 – It is one of the most infamous pictures in tech today. This is the Microsoft crew. Can you guess which one is Bill Gates? The picture was updated in 2008 when the group (except Bob Wallace, who passed away in 2002) got back together for Bill Gates last few days at Microsoft (below). The staff picture includes: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen (2nd row) Bob O’Rear, Bob Greenberg (who helped launch Cabbage Patch Kids), Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin, (3rd row) Steve Wood, Bob Wallace (passed away in 2002) and Jim Lane. This Day in Tech...

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Day in Tech History / Geek

December 5, 2018

December 6th, 1768: Encyclopedia Britannica Published

1768 – Encyclopedia Britannica began publishing the first print – otherwise known as “part I”. It was the brain child of Colin Macfarquhar, and Andrew Bell, and was a conservative reaction to the French Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot. The first volume would be completed Edinburgh, Scotland by 1771. The 3rd edition would become popular and also expand for the first time. Since then, the Britannica would be digitized and put on CD, then DVD format. Today’s current version has 400 editors and 1,000 contributors. The Encyclopedia also saw several pirate copies during it’s 242 year run.The Encyclopedia would move to the US in 1901. Today,...

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Richard Wexelblat - History of Programming Languages

Day in Tech History / Geek

December 4, 2018

December 5, 1965: First Computer Science Degree: Richard Wexelblat

1965 – Richard Wexelblat was the first candidate to complete his doctoral dissertation, hence giving him a degree in “Computer Science“. It was presented at the University of Pennsylvania – Moore School of Electrical Engineering. Richard went on to write the “History of Programming Languages” (ISBN:0-12-745040-8) This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for December 5 Today is the official birth of the Transistor Amazon Crashes HD Support for YouTube Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe! Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS | More

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Computer / Day in Tech History

December 3, 2018

December 4, 1985: Cray X-MP/48 Supercomputer

1985 – The Cray X-mp/48 Supercomputer begins operation in San Diego Supercomputer Center in California. The $15 million dollar supercomputer could process 400 megaflops (200 per processor). It was a shared-memory parallel vector processor and supported 2 or 4 million 64-bit words of main memory in 16 or 32 banks. The first Cray didn’t get installed until October 1986. Cray X-MP/48 replaced the Cray-1. It was succeeded by the Cray Y-MP8/864 in 1990. Movies such as “the Last Starfighter” were rendered using the Cray Supercomputer. This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for December 4 OS/2 Standard 1.0 ships The EV1 – GM‘s General Market...

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