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.
Sherlock HolmesHappy Halloween! 1892 – Arthur Conan Doyle publishes the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. After Doyle attended medical school, he moved to London, where he practiced medicine and wrote the first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet”.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 31
1938 – Orson Welles shocks the nation with radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells. A large number of listeners who tune into the program ten minutes late (because the singer on the Edgar Bergan show was not that great). Because of this, they didn’t know this was a fictional story and start to panic. The story was brought through a series of “Newscasts” that Welles portrayed the reporter on the street and how these giant machines landed and began to attack the population.This event would launch Orson Welles career. Of course, he would go on to create Citizen Kane, Othello, Don Quixote and other classic cinema pieces.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 30
2013: If you grew up in the 80’s, you knew what an IBM PC was. Even in the 90’s and 00’s, the PC was what you had in the corner of the house to do homework on, surf the internet, work out expenses and more.
William C. Lowe was the man that brought that all together. He joined IBM in 1962 and left in 1991. It was in 1981 that the IBM PC debuted.
Did you know IBM was late in the PC game? In order for them to beef up a PC division, they almost bought Atari.
Instead, they decided to go with an open architecture with the PC. It took one year to develop and in the end the IBM PC could be purchased for $1,565.
We remember William C. Lowe with admiration.
1955 – Reynold Johnson brought a new idea to life. Using magnetic cylinder memory, His team put 50 platters – 24 inch disks – into a series. The end result – the first hard drive was born. The device was then produced as the IBM 350 (debuted September 4th, 1956), which was put into the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), which was debuted in September 13th, 1956 – with the IBM 355 (hard drive) and IBM 650 (RAMAC) on September 14th. It ran at 1,200 rpm and held 5 MB of data.Reynold Johnson’s prototype weighed one ton. The 350 cost $10,000 / MB.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 29
1955 – William Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates has a son. William Gates III was born in Seattle, WA. Bill Gates, of course, went on to start Microsoft. Bill was CEO of Microsoft until he retired in 2008. In 2000, he started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Interestingly enough, 30 years later in 1985, Bill Gates put Microsoft up for IPO. That’s a birthday present…
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 28
1999 – Dataquest, a company that monitors PC sales, has shown a trend that Dell had maintained a 5% lead over Apple for 2 consecutive quarters. Therefore, Dell had become #1 in computer sales for 1999. Of course, a recent report mentioned that Apple could now buy Dell if it so inclined.This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 27
1998 – A Georgia man became the first person that ran a computer controlled by thought. The subject (known as J.R.) was paralyzed due to stroke. Dr Roy Bakay and Dr. Phillip Kennedy implanted a glass cone into J.R’s brain, which would allow him to mentally control the PC.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 26
1984– The Osbourne Vixen debuted. Inside was a ZILOG Z80a processor, with 64k RAM and the CP/M OS. Other programs included Wordstar, Supercalc and M-Basic. All this for $1,498.The Encore was also introduced. It was developed by Vadem Inc for $2,195. The computer was an MS-DOS computer with modem and four icon keys. phone, clock, disk and calculator.
2001 – Microsoft released Windows XP Home, Pro for retail. XP used the NT Kernel and merged the consumer desktop OS with the business desktop OS. XP was code-named “Whistler”.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 25
1995 – The Federal Networking council officially coins the term Internet: the Council’s Committee on Computing, Information and Communications (CCIC) created the FNC on Sept. 20th, 1995 to act as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies.From nitrd.gov
Resolution: The Federal Networking Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term “Internet. “Internet refers to the global information system that – (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 24