January 7

1943
Nikola Tesla passed away. He was a pioneer of technology. He was born on July 10 1856

1954
The Georgetown-IBM experiment, the first public demonstration of a machine translation system, is held at the head office of IBM in New York. In the experiment, more than sixty Russian sentences are translated automatically into English using a IBM 701 mainframe computer programmed with a simple vocabulary of 250 words and just six grammatical rules. The purpose of the demonstration is to attract government interest to the project, and the event receives heavy coverage from the media, which portrays the experiment as a success. The authors of the software claim that in three to five years, machine translation will become solved problem.

1963
The SketchPadfor the TX-0Ivan Sutherland introduces the SketcHPad, one of the earliest applications for the TX-0, as a part of his Ph.D. thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). SketchPadallows the direct manipulation of objects on a computer screen to create and manipulate graphics with a light pen. Sutherland’s thesis will become the basis of many future graphical user interfaces (GUI).

1970
The IBM Data Processing Division (DPD) announces the IBM Tariff Publishing System and IBM Traffic Profile Analysis System, two logistical programs for shipment coordination.

1982
CES, Commodore International introduces the Commodore 64 (C-64) computer. The features a 6510 processor, 64KB RAM, 20KB ROM, Microsoft BASIC, and 16 color graphics. The company also introduces the Ultimax, which features up to 2KB RAM for US$149. Price: US$600 (US$200 in 1983) CES, Texas Instruments (TI) releases the Peripheral Expansion Box for the TI-99/4a home computer. While the “P-box” represents a significant improvement over other TI-99/4 peripherals, its price is absurdly high. In addition, there is a very limited supply of the device, leaving the few consumers who are willing to pay the price scrabbling to find one. Price: US$1,474

1984
CES, Commodore International introduces the Commodore 264. The system features a 7501 microprocessor and 64KB RAM. Code-name: “TED” (named for its Text Editing Chip) At Winter Consumer Electronics Show CES, Commodore International demonstrates a prototype of the Commodore 364 computer. The 364 is a model of the Commodore 264 featuring a separate numeric keypad, 48KB ROM, and a built-in voice synthesizer. Commodore International announces that during 1983, the company sold a record-breaking US$1 billion of computers.

1992
AT&T releases its first video-telephone. Price: US$1,499

1997
At the Macworld Conference & Expo, Apple Computer introduces a 500MHz Macintosh that uses a Exponential Technology processor. Apple is a major investor in the Exponential processor manufacturer, which has emerged from obscurity in the last year following its announcement that it will manufacture the 500MHz chip used in this system. The two companies have co-developed the chip, dubbed the X704. At the Macworld Conference & Expo, Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak appear before the press together for the first time since 1984 to announce Apple’s plans to release an operating system code-named Rhapsody in 1998. This new operating system will run Java applications, current Mac applications, and Next OS applications. Microsoft forms the Macintosh Business Unit, a unit devoted to producing software for the Apple Macintosh. Visit the unit’s official website. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) officially discontinues development and support for the Mosaic web browser, which it first released in 1993. Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Chat.

1998
Amazon suffers technical problems which shuts the website down from 10am for nearly eight hours.

2002
Adobe Systems releases version 2 of Adobe LiveMotion for Windows. AMD releases the 1.66GHz Athlon XP 2000+ processor, featuring a 256KB Level-2 Cache and a 266MHz Front-Side Bus. Price: US$339 (US) in 1000-unit quantities Apple Computer releases the redesigned iMac, featuring a 15 inch LCD flat screen mounted on a pivoting arm, a 700MHz or 800 MHz PowerPC G4 processor and Apple’s SuperDrive. Price: US$1299, US$1399, and US$1799, respectfully Intel introduces 2GHz and 2.2GHz Pentium 4 processors, featuring a 8KB Level-1 data cache, a 12KB Level-1 instruction cache, a 512KB Level-2 cache, a 400 MHz system bus, and two pipelined FPUs. The processors support Hyper-Threading, MMX, SSE, and SSE2 instructions. Code-name: Northwood Price: US$364 and US$562 respectively in 1000-unit quantities

2003
At the Macworld Conference & Expo, Apple Computer introduces the iLife application suite, which includes iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes, as well as Safari. Apple also releases the Keynote presentation software. Price: US$49 (iLife), US$99 (Keynote) Microsoft releases Windows Media Player 9 for Windows, featuring video-smoothing technology.

2005
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) releases a white paper outlining a series of legislative proposals that would make it easier to prosecute copyright infringers. In it the BSA claims that recent court decisions represent an “impediment to effective enforcement” of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

2007
Szymon Stefanek releases version 3.2.0 of the KVIrc IRC client for Mac OS X and Windows.

2009
Sun acquires Q-Layer : an automation process for cloud computing. Details were not disclosed Zuckerberg announces that Facebook hit 150 million users to their popular social network OLPC cuts their workforce in halg, while dropping others salaries to keep jobs alive.

2011
A Virginia judge orders Twitter to divulge information for 2 individuals involved in the WikiLeaks probe.

2014
Apple opens an official store on Tmall, a marketplace run by Alibaba.