The Day in Technology History is a podcast detailing what happened in Tech. This is a daily podcast, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We look at stories of the Information Age, dates of artifacts, creation of Silicon Valley and the history of companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Commodore, Facebook, Twitter and more. It’s a Computer museum in a podcast.
1984 – Alex Jeffreys of Leicester, England noticed and deduced that DNA is a unique item from person to person and could possibly be used to identify someone. Hence, Genetic Fingerprinting was born. Alex was originally working on a way to determine heredity of illnesses when he made this discovery.
1945 – Grace Hopper is forever immortalized in the computer world as the first person to find a bug in a computer system. Litterally. The bug was a moth in between Relay #70 on Panel “F” of the Harvard Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator.From there on end, “Bug” meant a problem in a computer system. I guess once the moth was removed, the word “Debug” was also added.BTW – The relay functioned properly after the moth was removed.
1947 – It sounds like that same relay finally failed 2 years later.
2008 –Real launches a new program that will allow you to put your DVDs and other format movies onto the hard drive. It instantly became a hotbed of controversy as the software raised the question: can you legally copy the data to another media? The battle started in court and at this current point, RealDVD is on an injunction of sales.
1981 – It was called the Illiac IVILLIAC IV and was the first large parallel processing computer. The computer was first planned by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency who contracted the University of Illinois to build it. It was up and running until 81, when the Illiac IV was shut down.
2011 – Carol Bartz sends an email to her (former) staff at Yahoo!
To all:
I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.
-Carol
2001 – Mark Cuban and Phillip Garvin launch HDNet, the first High Definition TV signals. It was available both through cable and satellite television. The channel got some news for their exclusive HD coverage of the US invasion of Afghanistan.
2007 – Lulu.com is a site that allows people to publish their own books. Hulu.com is an online video site. Still, Lulu felt that Hulu was way too close to their name, so they decided to file a lawsuit for similarity.Similarity of what?
Now if you want to go sue someone who is backed by NBC Universal, you have a lot of marbles. Nonetheless, it sounds more like a publicity stunt for Lulu to get their name out. Well, the lawsuit was dropped on Oct. 22, and Hulu launched in Beta. Ultimately, by March 12th, 2008, Hulu.com was officially launched.
2008– A letter was published from the creator of “Pull my Finger” iPhone application from Apple. The program was simple – you pull the finger and a sound was created (You can guess the sound). The letter read:
We’ve reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store. It may be very appropriate to share with friends and family, and we recommend you review the Ad Hoc method on the Distribution tab of the iPhone Developer Portal for details on distributing this application among a small group of people of your choosing.
1995 – The online auction site eBay officially was founded on this day by Pierre Omidyar, but it was known back then as “AuctionWeb“. The first auction was for a broken laser pointer. It was sold for $14.83.Makes me wonder how much that laser pointer would be worth if it went back up on the auction block.
The hobby became a business real quick when his server fees increased dramatically. He decided to take AuctionWeb to the next level and hire an employee – Chris Agarpao. Soon, eBay got their first president in 1996 when Jeffrey Skoll took the reins.
Since then the company has grown to a juggernaut in the online Auction business. They even have an ebay slot machine. Just like the auction site, I personally didn’t do too well in profiting from it…