1800
The voltaic pile was announced by Alessandro Volta. He presented a paper to the Royal Society in London.
1886
Great Barrington, MA started the first alternating current power plant.
1916
Albert Einstein sent a paper to Annelen Der Physik called “Die Grundlage der Allgemeinen Relativitatstheorie”. Otherwise known as “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity”.
1990
A hacker by the name of “Dave” leaves a message on Cliff Stoll’s computer saying he was not happy with his book “The CooCoo’s Egg” – a story of Stoll’s attempts to spy on the Hacker “Hunter” and the birth of computer forensics.
1995
In Tokyo, Japan twelve people are killed and more than thirteen hundred others sickened when packages containing Sarin gas are released on five separate subway trains by Aum Shinrikyo cult members.
1997
Apple Computer releases the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) to commemorate the company’s twentieth anniversary. The system features a 250MHz PowerPC 603e, a 256KB Level-2 Cache, 32MB – 128MB RAM, 2MB VRAM, a 2GB hard drive, a 1.4MB floppy drive, a 4x CD-ROM drive, an FM radio tuner, and the Mac OS 9.1 operating system. The system is the first Apple desktop to feature a track pad, the first Apple desktop with a flat screen, the first Apple PowerPC desktop to diverge from the beige tower design, and the first Apple to feature a vertical CD drive. Only twelve thousand of the systems will be produced. Browse a gallery of photos of the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. Price: US$7,499
1998
Two teenagers hack T-Online, the online service run by Germany’s national telephone company and steal the details of hundreds of bank accounts. The two sixteen year old hackers brag about their exploits, calling Deutsche Telekom’s security for the online service absolutely primitive. Visit the official T-Online website.
2000
The 3Com Corporation announces plans to exit the high-end data networking market and to sell its dial-up modem business to a company newly formed by the Accton Technology and NatSteel Electronics. Shipments of 3Com’s NetBuilder and PathBuilder will be discontinued on June 20, 2000. Visit the official 3Com website.
Intel releases the 850 and 866MHz Pentium III processors. Price: US$765 and US$776
2001
GameDaily reports that Capcom has decided to drop out of the arcade-game business, which it has been in since 1984, in order to focus on home video game development. According to the report, arcade games accounted for thirty percent of the company’s gross revenue at its peak.
New York City police disclose that thirty-two year old high school dropout, Abraham Abdallah, allegedly duped more than two hundred Forbes-listed corporate Chief Executive Officers out of millions of dollars by using computers to obtain credit records to borrow their identities in order to transfer funds and fraudulently purchase merchandise. Abdallah’s victims include Paul Allen, Michael Eisner, Steven Spielberg, Ted Turner, and Oprah Winfrey.
Teradyne, Inc., a manufacturer of semiconductor test equipment, announces that it has plans to lay off 650 employees and that it will delay the salaries of its remaining personnel. Visit the official Teradyne website.
2002
At the Macworld Conference & Expo in Tokyo, Japan, Apple Computer introduces the 10GB iPod. Visit the official Apple iPod website. Visit the official Macworld Conference & Expo website.
2005
Hackers break into a housing and food service computer system at the California State University at Chico. The system contains the identity information of about fifty-nine thousand current, former and prospective students, as well as faculty and staff members. The hackers install root kit software on the system that allowed them to secretly store games, movies, and music on the system’s computers. They also attempt to break into other university computers, but are unsuccessful, according to later reports from school officials. While there is no indication that the hackers specifically targeted confidential information, the University will notify those whose information is in the database to expect the worst. As a result of the break in, the university will no longer require students and employees to provide Social Security numbers in its campus identification systems.
Yahoo! acquires Ludicorp, which included the popular photo sharing website Flickr.
2009
Google Chrome adds RSS support
Craigslist takes the top search term. It ousted MySpace, which was the top term since March 11, 2006
2011
AT&T announces they intend on purchasing T-Mobile for $39 billion dollars.
2014
Facebook engineers released an open-source version of ‘hack’, a programming language used at Facebook.
Google announced all email will now have a level of encryption. The service was turned on in 2010 but didn’t require people to use it until now.
Alex Kibkalo was arrested for theft of Microsoft trade secrets. He leaked early copies of Windows 8 to a French Blogger in 2012.