1995 – 3DFX releases the much anticipated Voodoo 3D acceleerator. QuakeGL becomes the first game using the Voodoo 3D. Hi-resolution rendering was it’s advantage. 3Dfx would continue to make the VooDoo until NVidia acquires the rights. 3Dfx would ultimately file for bankruptcy in 2002.
Hewlett Packard came out with their first Programmable calculator in 1979. The HP-41c was the first to give alphanumeric display capabilities. It would actually tell you what to do (ex. “ENTER RADIUS”) instead of leaving your wondering. It also had four ports that could be used to expand memory, install a Thermal printer, magnetic reader or bar code scanner.
2011 – Apple Announces the iPhone 4s, with retina display and Siri functionality. The 4s contains the A5 chipset and would be on sale October 10th. Apple also announced iOS5 update, which would be available on October 12th.
1997 – Back in February, it was announced that US Robotics be acquired by 3Com Corporation in a $6.6 billion stock swap. This would add to 3Com’s computer networking company against Cisco as they would become the second largest networking company.
The merger did go through a series of corporate evaluations before the shareholders agreed to the merger.
Eventually, Hewlett-Packard acquired 3Com in 2010 and the companies products were merged into the HP name.
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.
1988 – The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is what we use daily to open up email, our web browser and even those apps on your smartphone or tablet. With the first real GUI came the first copyright infringement for it as Apple sued both Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard for stealing features from Macintosh’s interface.
Hewlett Packard was also named for their New Wave desktop environment. Missing from the suit is Microsoft Presentation Manager, which became the interface for IBM’s OS/2.
The lawsuit got muddied when Xerox sued Apple for the same thing. That instance got thrown out rather quick. But the original suit lasted until 1994 when the court ruled: “Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor…”
Apple tried to take the case to the Supreme Court but was denied.
EDITOR NOTE: I received documentation that shows this event actually happened on March 5th. This will be corrected on Wikazine.com and changed for next year.
1986 – Fremont, California police set up a BBS called “Phoenix Fortress” in order to do one thing – catch cyber criminals. Sgt. Dan Pasquale was the online contact with the handle “Revenger”. He continued to stay in contact with hundreds of of hackers and pirates in seven states through the BBS until they collected enough information to make an arrest.
Stolen credit card numbers, long distance codes, selling weapons, hacking information and more were divulged through this BBS. A lot of the arrests were misdemeanors and many arrests were made against teens – ranging from 15 to 19 years old.
Those who were convicted lost their computer equipment. The original warrants were issued on Feb 26th, so some arrests may have been made in the first few days of March.
1990 – The secret service and Austin TX police raided Steve Jackson Games, along with the home of Loyd Blankenship, writer of GURPS Cyberpunk. Four computers, two laser printers and all of the companies’ hardware was seized. This was a part of a nationwide data piracy investigation.
It was a very sketchy reason for why the roleplaying and gaming company got raided this hard. This also brought on a six month battle to get back their hardware, which they finally were able to retrieve all but one hard drive. Finally, on October 21, 1990, Steve Jackson Games got to look at the warrant and reason why they were raided.
It turned out Blankenship was doing research for his book. He visited and talked alot about questionable topics at his home and at his work – Steve Jackson Games.
This incident sparked the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation – a nonprofit dedicated to the constitutional rights of computer users.
1995 – 3DFX releases the much anticipated Voodoo 3D acceleerator. QuakeGL becomes the first game using the Voodoo 3D. Hi-resolution rendering was it’s advantage. 3Dfx would continue to make the VooDoo until NVidia acquires the rights. 3Dfx would ultimately file for bankruptcy in 2002.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for November 6