April 3, 1973: The first mobile cell phone call was made
1973 – Martin Cooper made the first handheld cellular phone call in public. Walking down the streets of New York, Cooper – the General Manager of Motorola’s communication system division – talked on the phone. It’s not the first cellular call since car phones have been around before then. The phone is also known as the “Brick” cell phone.
1987 – IBM releases a flurry of new items on this day. The most notable was the IBM PS/2 – Their first 80386 system using a 3.5 floppy (720kb or 1.44 MB discs), MFM hard drive, PC-DOS and OS/2. Multiple models were released, including the Model 60 (10 MHz 286 processor) and Model 80 ( 20 MHz 386 processor). Hard drives went up to 115 MB and would cost you $6,995 for the basic model, to $10,995.
IBM also introduced the VGA in Model 50, the Multicolor Graphics Array (MCGA), high resolution graphics card for up to 1024×768 in 256 colors – Called the 8514/A and it’s Micro Channel Archetecture (MCA). IBM released PC-DOS 3.3 and their Operating System of OS/2.
2006 – Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass launch Twitter (a.k.a. Twttr) with Jack’s first Tweet. “Just setting up my Twttr” went across the network of only a few followers. Similar to Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr. Watson, come here” statement or “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into a wax cylinder.
Twitter was officially founded, but still in beta. The group at first didn’t acquire the highly priced “Twitter.com” until they had a proof of concept. Six months in, Twttr needed their “i” and “e”.
1926 – Robert Goddard became the first man to launch liquid-fueled rocket. The liquid oxygen and gasoline mixture launched the 10 foot rocket, travelling at 60 MPH, to an altitude of 41 feet.
The rocket was dubbed “Nell” and was launched in the cold climate in Auburn Massachusetts.
The New York Times picked up on Goddard’s experiment, but wasn’t kind to him. They denounced his work, ultimately swaying public opinion.
An unwavered Goddard put together a team and in 1930 continued his research. He made some great strides until 1945 when he passed away.
His work and 214 patents gave way for scientists to continue the research and eventually send astronauts to the moon. On July 1969, The New York Times retracted the 1926 article, giving him proper credit as the father of modern rocketry.
1994 – Apple computer released a new line of MacIntosh computers in the Power Macintosh 6100. With a 60-66 MHz PowerPC 601 RISC processor – the first time Apple used this processor line – up to 32 MB of RAM, and options such as a composite and S-Video input/output, along with full 48 kHz 16-bit DAT resolution sound processing, this was the computer for the mulitmedia professional. The basic Power Macintosh 6100 was priced at $2,209
Apple also introduced the Power Macintosh 7100 for $3,379 and the 8100 with a 68LC040 emulation ROM for $4,869
Mark Zuckerberg’s first Interview after Facebook IPO
2014 – Mark Zuckerberg told the press he called President Barak Obama to bring his concerns to the table. The Facebook post talked about trust on the Internet, keeping it a shared space and how we should work together to create a secure environment.
“I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.”
The NSA stated they do not use their technical abilities to impersonate US company websites. The refuted all reports.
2007 – The Energy Policy Act of 2005 ammended Daylight savings time 3 weeks . The theory was to move clocks forward 1 hour 3 weeks earlier than usual and Fall back in the first week of November (instead of last week in October). From a previous study, it was concluded this change would save households 1% of energy each day of DST.
The history of Daylight Savings Time dates back to Benjamin Franklin. He noticed people had their shutters closed to keep out the morning sun, then burned more candles in the evening. Through time he convinced others to change the times so people would get up earlier and enjoy the summer sunlight.
With more energy efficient devices, some have debated that Daylight Savings Time is not needed anymore. However, reports state that when we spring forward, our energy bill reduces 2-4%.
2008 – SXSW Interactive keynote, Mark Zuckerberg was being interviewed by journalist Sarah Lacy. There was a lot of anticipation for the event, but things went south quickly (no pun intended). During the interview, Lacy starts talking about these books Zuckerberg writes into but never formally asked him about it. She gets a little befuddled because Mark was not picking up the ball.
She verbally notes the stall, which Zuckerberg replies “You have to ask a question.” That brought the audience into the conversation with a standing ovation. Trying to continue, Lacy finally made a question out of this story with Mark giving a 2 minute answer and not divulging that he “burned those books”.
Lacy then went to the audience for affirmation of the book burning. However, she instead got the comment “Talk about something interesting!”
Sarah responded with “Try to do what I do for a living. It’s not as easy as it looks…” That brought the audience into the conversation.
After that, people took to Twitter, wondering why Lacy wasn’t asking questions.
Finally, they ended the keynote with Lacy saying “I’m sorry to torture you for an hour.” The comment was not well-received.