2001 – The computer animated movie “Shrek” hits theaters. The 90 minute movie was produced on a $60 million budget and although it’s first weekend only saw $42 million , the overall theatrical run brought in $487 million. Shrek was the first computer animated film to win an Academy Award (Best Animated Feature).
1902 – The Antikythera mechanism was found off the coast of Greece. They only found a part of it, and wasn’t really sure what it did. Eventually, this device was declared to be the oldest known analog computer. The device was used to predict eclipses and astronomical events so ships could plan accordingly.
The device was found by archaeologistValerios Stais. British science historian Derek de Solla Price dated the device to 87 BCE. He concluded the device was lost only a few years after it’s production.
The low-tin bronze device (5% tin, 95% Copper) made the corrosion impossible to try and start up, so the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project was created to study, and possibly recreate the machine for a better understanding. Especially since the device was in fragments.
1940 – The first Corporate McDonalds restaurant opened in San Bernardino, CA by Richard and Maurice McDonald. “Speedee” was the mascot back then – a hamburger-chef that was poised upon the McDonalds sign. The “Golden Arches” dawned on the sides of the restaurant.
In 1955, Ray Kroc took notice and partnered up with the brothers. They created the corporate version of McDonalds at that time. He opened the 9th store in Des Plaines, IL and eventually took the headquarters there.
2011 – Hackers took down the Sony Playstation network on April 20th, 2011. Around 77 million accounts were comprimised and gamers couldn’t play online for over a month. On May 14, Sony started bringing the services back online on a country-by-country basis. North America was the first, and people could sign-in, play PS3 and PSP games, access rented content, play music already purchased, and use approved 3rd party apps such as Hulu and Netflix. A firmware update 3.61 was also available to update security for the users.
When it was all said and done, Sony had lost $171 million on this outage.
1987 – Version 1.0 of the Turbo C programming language is released. It offers the first integrated edit-compile-run development environment for the C programming language for IBM-compatible personal computers. Turbo C was developed by Bob Jervis as “Wizard C”. It runs on just 384KB of memory and is capable of inline assembly with full access to C symbolic names and structures.
1936 – When typewriters first came out, many different people worked on keyboard layouts to become the standard. QWERTY was a popular system but was not efficient. August Dvorak and William Dealey decided to create and patent an alternative to this style, the end result – the Dvorak keyboard was born.
The keyboard was more efficient, too. Key letters were together so you would “roll” words. T was next to H, N was next to S. The sub-dominant hand would take care of vowels and lesser-used consonants, while the dominant hand took care of most of the consonants. Therefore, a left-hand and right-hand Dvorak keyboard was designed.
More interesting – People would type twice as fast as with a QWERTY style (120 words per minute). However, the people were typing so fast, the hammers on the typewriter would get stuck together. With those two major issues, the Dvorak keyboard did not get accepted.
One can switch to a Dvorak keyboard, though. Simply change the keyboard settings, and don’t look down at your keyboard (because the letters will be all wrong).
2011 – Eric Schmidt shows off the new Google Chrome OS but with an added feature as he introduced Google Chromebook – a personal computer with the Google Chrome OS built-in. The device loads straight to the browser where you can install applications for functionality on your Chromebook. The first Chromebook would begin selling on June 15, 2011.
Since then, Google has released the Pixelbook, Pixelbook 2, and the newest Pixel Slate – their tablet offering.
2001 – TAT-14, the Transatlantic cable begins commercial service. A dual, bi-directional ring configuration using Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplex (DWDM) – Sixteen wavelengths of STM-64 per fiber pair. It carried 640 Gbps, and connectedGermany, the UK, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands with the US.
Even though there have been a couple failures, TAT-14 is still in service.