1923– 90 years ago, Walt and Roy Disney start what is known as the Walt Disney Company. It started as the Disney Brothers Cartoon studio. Walt Disney created a short film entitled Alice’s Wonderland.
In 1986, the name was officially changed to the Walt Disney Company. Steve Jobs was a shareholder and board member. Walt Disney Studios is one of the largest in Hollywood with networks ESPN, ABC, A&E and more.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 16
1985– IBM announced, with co-developer Texas Instruments, the Token Ring network along with PC Network software – six months ahead of schedule. The TR only did network transmission speed of 4 Mbps (It didn’t hit speeds of 16 Mbps until 1989), and worked over standard phone wiring.
Using terminated BNC cable, Token Ring created just that; a Ring connection that talks in one direction.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 15
1986 – Telenet funded a project to develop an improved public domain application to application file transfer protocol. This protocol would alleviate the throughput problems their network customers were experiencing with XMODEM and Kermit file transfers. ZMODEM could provide high performance and reliability over packet switched networks while preserving XMODEM’s simplicity. It made XModem and YModem obsolete.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 14
1999– Priceline filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and its Expedia travel service. The suit outlined how they violated U.S. patent number 5,794,207, “Method and Apparatus for a Cryptographically Assisted Network System Designed to Facilitate Buyer-Driven Conditional Purchase Offers.” The two sites come to terms in 2001, in where Microsoft pays a fine.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 13
1988– Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. Steve Jobs shows off the NeXT Computer featuring the Motorola 68030 microprocessor at 25 MHz. The computer introduces several new features including optical storage disk, voice recognition, and object-oriented languages. The system came with the NeXT STep operating system and cost $6,500.
NeXT computer sold around 50,000 units. The NeXTSTEP Operating System was highly influential. It was the basis of Mac OS X. Apple acquired NeXT on Decemeber 20th, 1996 for $429 million in cash. Steve Jobs became interim CEO of Apple and the rest was history.
Steve Jobs almost didn’t come back after he was fired from Apple. He ended up not only founding NeXT, but also helped with Pixar. It does beg the question: Would we have an iPhone, iPad if Jobs wouldn’t have come back? Same question if he wasn’t brought back as CEO of Apple? Would it have been the NeXTPhone and NeXTPad?
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 12
1979– Visicalc is released by Dan Bricklin. The spreadsheet application is called the first killer app for personal computers. It turned the PC from a hobby to a business tool. Only downfall for Bricklin was he did not patent the system, therefore, clones like SuperCalc, Microsoft’s MultiPlan and Lotus 1-2-3, would show up.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 11
1980– The video game that changed it all debut in North America. The infamous yellow pie chart gobbling up little dots and avoiding ghosts for top scores was released to the Japanese arcades in May, but finally made it to North America in 1980. The 80’s era officially was in full swing. Pac Man fever was on the loose.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 10
1991– The second lawsuit of Apple vs. Apple was settled: Apple computers vs. Apple records (the Beatles label). The suit was about producing music. Of course there was a fine line between the lawsuit – after all Apple Computers is in the computer business and Apple Records was in the music making business. Nonetheless, the record label felt that Apple computer was starting to infringe on their turf, so they decided to make the attack. This issue went on a few times, later in the form of iTunes and the iPod.
This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for October 8