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).
1984 – One billion points on one quarter. That was the reason for Tim McVey Day. At the Twin Galaxies arcade back on January 17th, Tim scored 1,000,042,270 points on one quarter to the game “Nibbler” – a hybrid Pac-Man and Centipede game.
McVey got his name in Computer Games Magazine for it, and so he became the first video gamer to get a civic day in his honor.
His record was broken eight months later by Enrico Zanetti.
Of course, this event gets overshadowed by the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh.
2006 – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a game that changed perception of the industry. The grit and cruelty of the GTA franchise has not only brought controversy, its also brought the fans.
One bit of controversy was the “Hot Coffee” minigame within GTA. Hot Coffee was a euphemism for sex. In the minigame, the main character and the girlfriend initiated in coitus, which got a lot of parents upset.
The Hot Coffee minigame was disabled by Take-Two, but people found ways around the block. This minigame prompted a re-rating to Adult, ultimately getting pulled from many game shelves.
1981 – While getting this up to 88 miles per hour doesn’t take you back in time, it was still a cool car to have. The First production Delorean DMC-12 was built. A prototype was made back in 1976 and all Deloreans were made in Ireland.
9,000 Deloreans were made before financial issues got to the company in 1983. A revival was attempted and announcements of an all-electric Delorean (with prototype), but as of this point has not come out of Vaporware.
There is one gold-plated Delorean in Reno, NV. I also got to experience the original “Back to the Future” Delorean at CES 2014 (video below).
1885 – Sounding like anything but a roller coaster, the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway was the first American designed amusement coaster designed by LaMarcus Adna Thompson.
Only 5 cents to ride, the Switchback was a simple coaster that took you about 600 feet to the next tower at six miles per hour. It had a height of 50 feet and a drop of 43 feet.
It opened on June 16, 1884 and eventually was replaced. But on this day, the roller coaster saw one of its first patents from this ride.
1983 – at an introductory price of $9995, Apple introduces the Lisa computer – the first computer with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). The computer featured a 5 MHz 68000 microprocessor, 1 MB RAM, 12″ monochrome monitor, dual 5.25″ 860 KB floppy drives, a 5 MB hard drive and more.
Lisa cost Apple Computer US$50 million to develop. The software for it cost Apple Computer US$100 million to develop.“Lisa” is an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture.
2012 – Yahoo! had some turbulent times from 2007 when founder Jerry Yang was CEO. Of course the big debacle being the Microsoft bid, which took over 9 months to settle with Carl Icahn being a major instigator.
Add to that the 2007 incident of the arrest of Shi Tao and Yahoo’s stance. Tao was arrested for divulging trade secrets and Yang put out a statement saying “We have to comply with Chinese Law”.
During this whole time, Yahoo shares were declining. Yang was replaced in 2009 by Carol Bartz, but remained on the board until 2012 when Yang fully resigned from all positions in the company.