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eMachines eOne Computer

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January 30, 2004: Gateway Acquires eMachines

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eMachines eOne Computer
eMachines eOne Computer

Gateway computer makes a bold move and purchases rival eMachines for 50 million shares of Gateway common stock and $30 million in cash.

eMachines was a company founded by Lap Shun Hui along with South Korean companies Korea Data Systems, and TriGem. Their strategy was to put a PC in every house starting at $399.

These computers housed lower-end processors, and Windows OS – enough for the average person to get on and get online.

eMachines had previously purchased Free-PC; the company that offered free computers in exchange for pop-up ads while browsing.

Gateway finalized the acquisition in March. Wayne Inouye was placed as CEO, and eMachines stayed a separate company.

Ultimately, Gateway computers was purchased by Acer computers. The eMachines brand was ultimately discontinued on Jan 17, 2013.

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  • Atari starts using the slogan “Innovative Leisure”
  • Samsung acquires the remaining 51 percent of AST
  • Sega announces the Dreamcast will be discontinued
Tim McVey Day

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January 28, 1984: Tim McVey Day

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Tim McVey Day
Tim McVey Day

1984 – One billion points on one quarter. That was the reason for Tim McVey Day. At the Twin Galaxies arcade back on January 17th, Tim scored 1,000,042,270 points on one quarter to the game “Nibbler” – a hybrid Pac-Man and Centipede game.

McVey got his name in Computer Games Magazine for it, and so he became the first video gamer to get a civic day in his honor.

His record was broken eight months later by Enrico Zanetti.

Of course, this event gets overshadowed by the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh.

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  • Yahoo buys Geocities
  • Radio Shack chooses Compaq over IBM
  • Ann Marie Linscott uses Craigslist to hire a hitman
Alexander Graham Bell

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January 25, 1881: The Oriental Telephone Company

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Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell

1881 –  Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison establish the Oriental Telephone Company of New York and the Angle-Indian Telephone Company Ltd. These companies were licensed to sell telephones in other countries such as Greese, Turkey, India, Japan, China and more.

Countries recieving phones would have 3-digit numbers, which changed to 4, 5, then finally 7. It is unclear when the Oriental Bell Telephone company dissolved, but some of the phone lines they installed are still functional to this day, as according to this article by Indiatimes.com

1915 – 34 years after the company established, the first transcontinental call would be made.

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In Wisconsin, friends are called "Sconnies". Even if you're not from Wisconsin, you can be part of the Sconnie Geek Nation through my coverage! By pledging, you join the Geek Sconnie Nation! Plus, you help me cover costs so I can continue the coverage of Gadget tech, music tech, and geek culture through the shows.

  • Version 2.2 of Linux
  • Jini Network Architecture
  • Judge reinstates how Microsoft can incorporate Sun Java
X-Ray

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January 23, 1896: The First Public X-Rays

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1896 – Although he was not the only person to be working on the technology and not the first X-ray, Wilhelm Roentgen gave the first public lecture and demonstration of his device. He photographed Dr. Albert von Kolliker’s hand at the Wurzburg Physical Medical Society.

The first X-ray he ever took was of his wife’s hand (with wedding ring on). The practice is also known as Röntgen rays.

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  • Sega and Bandai announce a merger
  • Apple releases Macintosh Office
  • The integrated circuit is conceived
  • Lenovo acquired IBM ‘s Server division
DeLorean DMC-12

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January 21, 1981: The First Delorean DMC-12

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DeLorean DMC-12
DeLorean DMC-12

1981 – While getting this up to 88 miles per hour doesn’t take you back in time, it was still a cool car to have. The First production Delorean DMC-12 was built. A prototype was made back in 1976 and all Deloreans were made in Ireland.

9,000 Deloreans were made before financial issues got to the company in 1983. A revival was attempted and announcements of an all-electric Delorean (with prototype), but as of this point has not come out of Vaporware.

There is one gold-plated Delorean in Reno, NV. I also got to experience the original “Back to the Future” Delorean at CES 2014 (video below).

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In Wisconsin, friends are called "Sconnies". Even if you're not from Wisconsin, you can be part of the Sconnie Geek Nation through my coverage! By pledging, you join the Geek Sconnie Nation! Plus, you help me cover costs so I can continue the coverage of Gadget tech, music tech, and geek culture through the shows.

  • AOL acquires Personal Library Software
  • Intel stamping serial numbers on processors
  • Microsoft’s Injunction to package Java from Sun Microsystems.
AT&T

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January 15, 1990: The AT&T Reboot

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AT&T
AT&T

1990 – AT&T suffers the oddest outage nationwide. A switch in New York crashed, then rebooted. This caused the other switches linked to the New York switch to also reboot. The cascade continued on until all 114 switches were rebooting on 6 second intervals.

The continued failure lasted for 9 hours, leaving 60,000 customers without long distance calling. The problem was resolved when engineers found a bug in the latest update dealing with 4ESS long distance switches. They applied a patch which stopped the crash-reboot cycle.

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In Wisconsin, friends are called "Sconnies". Even if you're not from Wisconsin, you can be part of the Sconnie Geek Nation through my coverage! By pledging, you join the Geek Sconnie Nation! Plus, you help me cover costs so I can continue the coverage of Gadget tech, music tech, and geek culture through the shows.

  • Intel acquires Xircom
  • Wikipedia is launched
  • Coveritlive and Twitter goes down for Steve Jobs Keynote
Dave Winer

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January 11, 2001: Podcasting is Technically Created

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Dave Weiner
Dave Weiner adds enclosure to RSS 0.92

2001– Dave Weiner added a new functionality to the RSS feed called “Enclosure“. It was defined as passing any audio file (mp3, wav, ogg, etc), video file (mpg, mp4, avi, mov, etc), PDF, or ePub (electronic publication) into the syndicated feed. Weiner demonstrated by enclosing a Grateful Dead song in his website at Scripting News. This was an idea that was proposed by Tristan Louis.

It wasn’t until Adam Curry and crew started iPodderX and in  February 2004 the name “Podcasting” was coined by Ben Hammersley. But its roots all come back to this day when RSS 0.92 was demonstrated.

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Nikola Tesla

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January 7, 1943: Nikola Tesla Passed Away

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Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla

Born in 1856, Nikola Tesla was the inventor of alternating current. Tesla even worked for Edison from 1882 to 1886. He then started the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing company in where he worked more on AC electricity.

This started the “War of Currents”, which we talked about on January 3rd when Edison electrocuted Topsy, the Elephant.

Tesla was also known for many patents and inventions, including the Tesla coil, Electro-magnetic motor, incandescent electric light, electric railway system and many more. He was known for X-Rays, radio, the remote control and wireless communications.

Learn more about Nikola through Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age book at Amazon

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In Wisconsin, friends are called "Sconnies". Even if you're not from Wisconsin, you can be part of the Sconnie Geek Nation through my coverage! By pledging, you join the Geek Sconnie Nation! Plus, you help me cover costs so I can continue the coverage of Gadget tech, music tech, and geek culture through the shows.

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