1894 – The first Sunday Comics section is printed by the New York World.
1985 – 91 years later, Bill Watterson syndicates a comic about a boy and his stuffed Tiger. Calvin and Hobbes will bring laughter to millions for the next ten years. It reached through 2,400 newspapers (at it’s height) and spun off 18 books. Bill Watterson ended the comic on December 31st, 1995 and has left it retired since.
The paper was called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” by Satoshi Nakamoto. It was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This was a roadmap to the creation of the crypto-currency, which officially launched on January 3, 2009.
The Abstract:
A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they’ll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.
The domain name “Bitcoin.org” was registered on August 18th. Since then, this premiere currency has seen some volitile transactions, jumping up to as high as $15,000.
1894 – The first Sunday Comics section is printed by the New York World.
1985 – 91 years later, Bill Watterson syndicates a comic about a boy and his stuffed Tiger. Calvin and Hobbes will bring laughter to millions for the next ten years. It reached through 2,400 newspapers (at it’s height) and spun off 18 books. Bill Watterson ended the comic on December 31st, 1995 and has left it retired since.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for November 18