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Author Archives: GilPress
Public Switched Telephone Network Launched
Today in 1878, the first commercial switchboard began operating in New Haven, Connecticut. It served 21 telephones on 8 lines consequently with many people on a party line. On February 17, Western Union opened the first large city exchange in San Francisco. … Continue reading
Posted in Telephone, This day in information
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30 Years Ago Today, Steve Jobs Introduced the Macintosh
See also Rolling Stone‘s 1984 feature on the Macintosh and The New York Times January 1984 review of the Macintosh and Steve Jobs’ presentation at the Boston Computer Society, January 30, 1984 (also here, at the Computer History Museum)
Posted in Apple, PCs, This day in information
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The Web At 20: ON Magazine Special Issue, December 2009
ON_December 2009 (PDF)
Posted in Uncategorized
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Rotational Diagrams: Organizing Information in Circles
In Reinventing the Wheel, writer, design critic, and Design Observer co-founder Jessica Helfand considers the rich history of rotational diagrams — the wheel as a visual metaphor and an interactive tool for representing and understanding information, predating print by thousands of years. … Continue reading
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
‘You made a will yet, Morse?’ ‘Not much to leave, really.’ ‘All these records of yours, surely?’ ‘Bit out of date, I’m afraid. We’re all buying CDs now.’ ‘Perhaps they’ll be out of date soon.’ Morse nodded. Strange was not … Continue reading
Posted in Digitization, Predictions, Recorded sound
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From Megabyte to Zettabyte: How Big?
“If you wrote out the information contained in one megabyte by hand, the resulting line of 1s and 0s would be more than five times as tall as Mount Everest. If you wrote out one gigabyte by hand, it would … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Information storage, Measurement
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SAGE Revealed: Birth of large-scale, real-time, distributed computing
Today in 1956, the development of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), is disclosed to the public. From MITRE’s website: “Looking back at the development of the computers supporting the SAGE, the origins of many key computer innovations are readily apparent. SAGE’s use of telephone … Continue reading
Wikipedia Launched
Today in 2001, Wikipedia was launched. Since its creation, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites. As of November 2013, Wikipedia was ranked by comScore as the 8th most popular web destination in the U.S. with more than … Continue reading
Al Gore Gives Birth to the Internet
Today in 1994, The Superhighway Summit was held at UCLA’s Royce Hall. It was the “first public conference bringing together all of the major industry, government and academic leaders in the field [and] also began the national dialogue about the Information … Continue reading
Steve Jobs on Starting Apple (1980 Video)
“We absolutely had no idea what people will do with [the PC] when we started out. The two people it was designed for were Woz and myself because we couldn’t afford to buy a computer kit on the market.” “Man … Continue reading
Posted in Apple, Computer history, PCs
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The Story of Information 