Category Archives: This day in information
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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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
Launching Cloud Telephony: First battery-operated switchboard installed
Today in 1894, New England Telephone and Telegraph installed the first battery-operated switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts. With what became to be known as the “common battery” (replacing the local battery attached to the telephone), the subscriber could signal the operator simply by … Continue reading
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Triumph of the Robots
Today in 2004, Dan Pulcrano of the Metro published “Triumph of the Robots: When Google tweaks its search rankings, whole economies tremble in fear”: The rapid ascent of invisible robots is a unforeseen twist in the sci-fi playbook. The theme of … Continue reading
Launching Photography: The Pencil of Nature and the Mirror with Memory
Today in 1839, the Daguerreotype process was presented to the French Academy of Sciences by Francois Arago, a physicist and politician. Arago told the Academy that it was “…indispensable that the Government should compensate M. Daguerre, and that France should then nobly give to … Continue reading
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IBM Introduces Personal Cloud Computing, Today in 1976
Today in 1976, IBM introduced Virtual Storage Personal Computing, “a new program product to allow people with little or no data processing experience to use a computer terminal to solve problems.” The terminals were connected to remote IBM mainframes via telephone … Continue reading
The Birth and Growth of Scientific Journals
Today in 1665, the first issue of the Journal des sçavans (later renamed Journal des savants), was published in Paris. It is widely regarded as the first scientific journal but a more apt description would be a journal for men of … Continue reading
First Pocket Calculator Introduced
Today in 1972, the HP-35 was introduced. The world’s first handheld-sized scientific calculator, ultimately made the slide rule, which had previously been used by generations of engineers and scientists, obsolete. Named for its 35 keys, it performed all the functions … Continue reading
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The Story of Information 