1955 – William Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates has a son. William Gates III was born in Seattle, WA. Bill Gates, of course, went on to start Microsoft. Bill was CEO of Microsoft until he retired in 2008. In 2000, he started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Interestingly enough, 30 years later in 1985, Bill Gates put Microsoft up for IPO. That’s a birthday present…
1983 – The Osbourne I was a computer introduced by Adam Osbourne in 1981. It featured a Z80 microprocessor and the computer would run at least $1800. However, the computer company did not fair too well. They tried to mask their true financial statements in hopes that things would turn around. However once investors found out what was going on, they would start asking questions. Osbourne could not handle the pressure and on this day they filed for bankruptcy.
2008– A letter was published from the creator of “Pull my Finger” iPhone application from Apple. The program was simple – you pull the finger and a sound was created (You can guess the sound). The letter read:
We’ve reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store. It may be very appropriate to share with friends and family, and we recommend you review the Ad Hoc method on the Distribution tab of the iPhone Developer Portal for details on distributing this application among a small group of people of your choosing.
August 18, 1992: Wang Computers had been growing, but their financial outlook didn’t seem good. In 1992, they filed for Bankruptcy protection. They eventually got out of bankruptcy, but not before they changed the scope of the business. They changed to Wang Global, then in 1999 were bought out by “Gentronics”
2011 – CEO Leo Apatheker made an announcement HP will be focusing on Enterprise, and putting the PC division on sale. This sale did not include the WebOS software. He instantly discontinued the HP TouchPad tablet and Pre series of smart phone. By the evening, most stores would discount the TouchPad to $99. This brought a lot of controversy, as some people would go to buy a TouchPad at Best Buy and they were denied as HP told them to ship the units back. BTW – HP was incorporated back in 1947 on this day.
Back in 1886, Gottlieb Daimler gets into his new invention. It looks like a horse-drawn buggy, but it has a one cylinder 1.1 HP engine mounted in the back seat. The first car got up to 16 km/h Seventeen years later, in 1903, Ford Motor company sells it’s first car. A Model A to Dr. Ernst Pfenning of Chicago. It was a twin cylindar combustion engine.
2006 – Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass and Evan Williams launch this 140 character “What are you doing” social network. The group first started production in March of 2006, but it launched on the 15th. Currently, over 200 million users are on Twitter.
The Enigma machine was the first electronic cipher machines, producing encrypted messages. German engineer Arthur Scherbius created this device in 1928 to turn a message into a jumble of code. Therefore, if the message got in the wrong hands, it could not be read.Of course, though time, the encryption was broken by British intelligence. However, it proved that we could put a level of security to a simple text message. Something we continue to strive for even today.
2011 – The US waited for this Swedish music streaming service, and on this day, we got it. Founded in 2006, Spotify announced after exhaustive negotiation with four major US record labels, they were given the green light to launch. It came with much praise from the online community. Since then, Spotify was integrated with Facebook, and launched their own apps and app finder.
Meanwhile, in 1995, after 15 million lines and 3 years of programming, Microsoft announces Windows 95 (a.k.a. Chicago) was deemed “Golden“.That meant Microsoft could not make any more fixes or adjustments would be made until it’s release on August 24th. Of course, Microsoft Windows 95 was their first 32-bit operating system and considered a major game changer in the world of computers.
Geekazine Fact: Jeffrey Powers got his IT career as a support agent for Windows 95.
1984 – Apple announced they would split up the Cupertino based company into three divisions – Apple II (handling all Apple III computers as well), the Apple 32 division (Lisa, and new Macintosh line of computers) and Accessory Products (Printers, keyboards, etc).
Delbert Yocam led the Apple II group which Steve Jobs would take care of Apple 32. Michael Muller would lead the accessories.
Apple did a lot of reorganizing, including Michael Spindler to VP of the European group and William Campbell to VP of sales in the US.