1998 – A Georgia man became the first person that ran a computer controlled by thought. The subject (known as J.R.) was paralyzed due to stroke. Dr Roy Bakay and Dr. Phillip Kennedy implanted a glass cone into J.R’s brain, which would allow him to mentally control the PC.
1985– Intel released the 80386 DX processor. The 275,000 transistor chip was a big jump from the 20 MHz 286. It contained the ability to address up to 4 GB of memory and had a bigger instruction set. The chip would be released, but most people wouldn’t see the processor until Spring of 1986Interesting enough – the 386 chip was finally discontinued in the Fall of 2007. The chip was used after personal computer days to power many embedded systems.
1988– Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. Steve Jobs shows off the NeXT Computer featuring the Motorola 68030 microprocessor at 25 MHz. The computer introduces several new features including optical storage disk, voice recognition, and object-oriented languages. The system came with the NeXT STep operating system and cost $6,500.
NeXT computer sold around 50,000 units. The NeXTSTEP Operating System was highly influential. It was the basis of Mac OS X. Apple acquired NeXT on Decemeber 20th, 1996 for $429 million in cash. Steve Jobs became interim CEO of Apple and the rest was history.
Steve Jobs almost didn’t come back after he was fired from Apple. He ended up not only founding NeXT, but also helped with Pixar. It does beg the question: Would we have an iPhone, iPad if Jobs wouldn’t have come back? Same question if he wasn’t brought back as CEO of Apple? Would it have been the NeXTPhone and NeXTPad?
1979– Visicalc is released by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. The spreadsheet application is called the first killer app for personal computers. It turned the PC from a hobby to a business tool.
The software was released under their company name “Software Arts”. It was developed for the Apple II computer with 6502 assmebler.
Only downfall for the company was they did not patent the system, therefore, clones like SuperCalc, Microsoft’s MultiPlan and Lotus 1-2-3, would show up.
2006 – The book iWoz: from Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple and had Fun Doing it. (**WHEW!**) came out. It was a book that was written to dispel some of the rumors and misconceptions on many different items.
1989 – 4 years after resigning from Apple, Steve Jobs and his newest company NeXT finally release the NeXTstepOS. It is a Unix based system, with some aspects of BSD and using the Mach kernal. This is the OS that will eventually merge into Apple when Jobs comes back.
1990 – The NeXTstation is finally released. It used the 68040 Motorola processor running 33MHz and the 68882 math co-processor running at 25 MHz. 2.88 MB floppy, 8 MB RAM, monochrome monitor, all for $4.995.If you wanted 4096 colors, that would cost you – $7,995.
1983 – The Osbourne I was a computer introduced by Adam Osbourne in 1981. It featured a Z80 microprocessor and the computer would run at least $1800. However, the computer company did not fair too well. They tried to mask their true financial statements in hopes that things would turn around. However once investors found out what was going on, they would start asking questions. Osbourne could not handle the pressure and on this day they filed for bankruptcy.
1945 – Grace Hopper is forever immortalized in the computer world as the first person to find a bug in a computer system. Litterally. The bug was a moth in between Relay #70 on Panel “F” of the Harvard Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator.From there on end, “Bug” meant a problem in a computer system. I guess once the moth was removed, the word “Debug” was also added.BTW – The relay functioned properly after the moth was removed.
1947 – It sounds like that same relay finally failed 2 years later.