February 4

1957
The first electric portable typewriter, the Model 5TE, is introduced by Smith-Corona, in Syracuse, New York. Read more about the history of the portable typewriter at Will Davis’s website.

1971
NASA astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell land on Moon aboard the Apollo 14 Lunar Module Antares.

1989
The final game for the Sega Master System 8-bit video game console, Bomber Raid, is released.

1994
Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt sends an email to US President Bill Clinton, marking the first email exchange between two heads of state.

1997
Apple Computer acquires NeXT for US$427 million in order to use the company’s OpenStep operating system as the basis for Mac OS X. Visit an archived version of the NeXT website.

Apple Computer CEO Gilbert Amelio announces plans to restructure the company in order to focus on the Macintosh. Co-founder, Steve Wozniak, returns for the first time since 1985 to serve on the executive committee with Steve Jobs as an adviser to Amelio. Visit the official website of Apple Computer.

Bill Gates makes a public statement that, I am very interested in continuing to work with Apple as we have done through history. But I am confused by the Apple operating system strategy … and have decided not to worry about the future (in this respect).

Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, and Texas Instruments (TI) announce an agreement to jointly develop a gigabyte Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chip.

1998
Bill Gates is struck in the face by a cream pie thrown by Noel Godin during a visit to Belgian government officials in Brussels. Watch a video of the incident at Bitstorm.

IBM researchers announce the first successful demonstration of the world’s first CMOS microprocessor capable of operating at one billion cycles per second (1GHz). Visit the official IBM website

The website of the D.D.D. is hacked by th3 h4m1sh n1nj4s.

The website of the Mexican Finance Ministry is hacked by LoTek, LeadRain & DES (High Tech Teens). Visit an archived version of the defaced website.

1999
The Connectix Corporation announces that the San Francisco Federal District Court has rejected Sony’s request for a temporary injunction preventing the shipment of the Virtual Game Station, a PlayStation emulator for the Apple Macintosh. Visit an archived version of the Virtual Game Station website.

Hitachi announces that it will discontinue its personal computer manufacturer in the United States, merging its operations into Hitachi Data Systems. Visit the official Hitatchi website.

2000
EarthLink merges with MindSpring to become the second largest internet service provider (ISP) in the US, after AOL. Visit the official EarthLink website.

2001
Per Lidén and CRUX Linux community release version 0.5.2 of the CRUX Linux operating system. The Crux distribution is targeted at advanced Linux users. Visit the official Crux website.

2002
Jason Diekman, known by the handles Dark Lord or Shadow Knight, is sentenced to twenty-one months in federal prison, an additional three years of supervised release, restriction on his access to computers, and fines of over US$87,000 in restitution for intercepting of user names and passwords from a number universities, including Harvard, and admittedly hacking to hundreds, maybe thousands of computers, including systems at California State University at Fullerton, Cornell University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and University of California campuses in Los Angeles and San Diego.

2003
AMD releases the 2133MHz Athlon MP 2600+ processor, featuring a 256KB Level-2 Cache and a 266MHz Front Side Bus.

2004
The upgrade of Abiline, the Internet2 backbone, from 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps is completed.

Mark Zuckerberg launches TheFacebook – which would eventually become Facebook

2009
North Dakota hybrid car drivers were receiving fake parking tickets. They would go to a website in which a trojan toolbar would install on their computers.

A teen from California declared he was going to kill himself. Jesse Coltrane, who was chatting with the teen from New Jersey, had actually took the threat seriously and took action to save the teens’ life.

Congress approves the DTV delay to June 17th.

Because Apple drops DRM from iTunes, Norway has decided to drop their case with Apple.

A massive online check on MySpace netted about 30 sex offenders that were not suppose to be on the Social Network site.

2014
Microsoft names Satya Nadella as CEO in the board of directors meeting.

FCC announced they would invest another $2 billion in broadband networks for schools over the next two years.