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.
1995 – Bill Gates sends out a memo to his staff saying that Microsoft needs to “Get back on track” to the Internet. The memo was entitled “The Internet Tidal wave.” Gates emphasizes that this is as important as IBM was to the personal computer.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 25
Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) was first released to theaters. Opening weekend sees $6 million of the $11 million budget in return, however, the longevity of the movie has grossed over $797 million (for Ep. IV only). This surpassed Jaws as the nominal highest-grossing film and remained that way until being surpassed by E.T. the Extra Terrestrial in 1983. Add to that, George Lucas was the first movie maker to keep the rights of the toy creation – netting billi0ns in revenue. The film starred Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, and Alec Guinness, among others.
Star Wars: A New Hope was followed by Empire Strikes Back, then in 1983, the Third (technically 6th) movie in the series – Return of the Jedi – was released. That had a budget of $32 million and netted $23 million opening weekend and $656 million worldwide.
Of course, George Lucas also released Episode I: the Phantom Menace (1999), Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Happy 35th anniversary to a historic franchise!
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 25
1993 – Microsoft unveils at COMDEX a new line of Operating System. Dubbed Windows NT (New Technology) this software would be geared toward businesses. With a NT Server and NT Workstation, Windows could deliver a secure environment while also allowing connections using the Windows 3.11 and later Windows 95 Operating systems. NT would become available on July 27, 1993.
1985– Quantum Computer Services was founded. Technically, it was a reorganization of Control Video Corporation, a company that started in 1983. The company was selling online service “Gameline” to Atari 2600 users. You would pay $49.95 for the modem and also a one-time $15 setup fee. With the reorganization, Jim Kimsey became Chief Executive Officer and Marc Seriff took the CTO role. Ninety employees quit, ten remained. The company changed to sell Quantum Link for Commodore 64 and 128 consoles. Eventually, they would get into AppleLink and PC Link. Quantum Computer Services eventually (October 1989) changed their name to America Online (AOL).
Jim Kimsey left AOL in 1995, where he stayed under the limelight. He was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by President George W. Bush.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 24
1995– Sun releases the Java Programming language. James Gosling at Sun Microsystems originally developed the language as a core component to Sun’s Java platform. It uses C and C++ syntax. It used the theory of “Write Once, Run Anywhere” (WORA). By doing this, a programmer didn’t need to recompile a program to run it or test for bugs. Most of Java Programming Language is under a GNU General Public License
On the same day, MySQL releases their SQL database program for web pages. This is known as a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). MySQL uses C and C++, the SQL parser used yacc and a hybrid of lexer called “sql_lex.cc”. Many different websites to this day use versions of MySQL, including us at Geekazine and the Day in Tech History.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 23
1980 – The first Pac-Man machine was installed. Namco installed the first Pac-Man machine in a movie theater in Tokyo. Created by Toru Iwatani, the game has been one of the most popular in Arcades around the world. Of course, Pac-Man was one of the most popular games in history and created many spin-offs including Ms. Pac-Man. Pac-Man was released in North America October of that year.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 22
2003– Caldera International finished the acquisition of the Server Software and Services divisions of Santa Cruz Operation. They turned around and officially renamed to the SCO group. The focus was more to the UNIX platform. The SCO group was in a major lawsuit with Novell until Masrch 2010 when the courts ruled that Novell had the proper rights to the SCO properties in the Linux OS.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 21
2009 – Craigslist was under fire for their erotic services. Reports of prostitution and other illegal activities were being conducted in the category. Craigslist revamped their site to remove the erotic services and add an “Adult” section – with more moderation. However, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster was given an injunction for threatening executives of Craigslist with criminal prosecution for aiding prostitution in the state.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 20
1980 – The machine was code named “Sara”. It was the Apple III and was planned to be the successor to the Apple II. However, the machine had enough failures that Apple had to re-launch this computer in August. Therefore, it was refered to as “Apple Failure III”. Then IBM came out with the PC and Apple switched gears with their Macintosh line. Apple III saw modest numbers before it was retired on April 24th, 1984.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 19