1886
German scientist, Dr. Carl Gassner, is issued a German patent for the first “dry” cell battery, which uses zinc as its primary component. (No. 37,758) He encased the cell chemicals in a sealed zinc container. Gassner’s battery is much like the carbon-zinc, general-purpose batteries popularly used today. Gassner will also patent his invention in Austria, Belgium, England, France, and Hungary by the end of the year. A US patent will be issued to Gassner in 1887. (US No. 373,064)
1908
Harvard University votes to establish Harvard Business School
1959
Grace Hopper led a group and met for the first time to begin building the COBOL programming language. COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language. [1]
1977
The Clash release their first album “The Clash”
1983
Steve Jobs convinces John Sculley to take a position as president and CEO of Apple Computer. Sculley was president of PepsiCo at the time.
1988
IBM announces that it will license Micro Channel Architecture patents to competitors.
1991
Sun’s Java team moves from Sun Microsystems to work in secret on its “Oak” development project (later re-named “Java.”)
1997
Microsoft Corp releases Internet Explorer 4.0
2004
The Fair Trade Commission of Japan (JFTC) raid of the offices of Intel’s Japanese subsidiary during the course of an investigation of allegations that Intel violated Japanese antitrust laws in the processor market.
2008
Software and storage company EMC announced that it will purchase Iomega for $213 million, or $3.85 per share
Yahoo adds videos to it’s popular Flickr site – The videos, limited to 90 seconds and 150MB, will be shown as thumbnails alongside users’ photos, and will inherit all the features of photos stored on the site
The construction of the world’s first building to integrate wind turbines is completed in Bahrain.
2009
Facebook hits 200 million members
RIAA backs a Three strikes bill implemented by France to illegal file sharing. However, the French Parliment votes to not implement the bill.
A federal jury finds Microsoft has violated a patent owned by Uniloc and is ordered to pay $388 million. Windows XP, Office XP and Server 2003 infringed on the patent on how the product activation works.
2011
Commodore 64 comes back from the dead.
Google signs deal with DOJ on ITA (Travel) acquisition
2013
Microsoft announced they were selling their IPTV division to Ericsson.
Vine hits #1 on Apple App store – 6 months after Twitter purchases
Verisign announced that over 250 million domain names have been registered. Half of those are .com and .net accounts
2014
NASA astronaut Steven Swanson sent the first Instagram from space – a selfie, overlooking the earth.
Microsoft issues the final patches for Windows XP and Office 2003.
Microsoft also officially ends support for Windows XP.
Netflix announced it would roll out 4K streaming on select content, including their original TV show “House of Cards”
Gogo announced the initiative to increase internet speeds to 70 Mbps. The first flights with the service will be in Japan.