Today in 1877, Thomas Edison recorded his voice on the phonograph for the first time, reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Here is his re-enactment of that first recording. Edison offered the following possible future uses for the phonograph in the North American Review in June 1878: Continue reading
“In 1996, digital storage became more cost-effective for storing data than paper.”
Morris and Truskowski, IBM Systems Journal, Vo. 42, No. 2, 2003. Continue reading
Today in 1977, the world’s first commercial interactive TV service opened for business in Columbus, Ohio. Initially operated out of a remodeled appliance store, Warner Communications’ Qube offered an unprecedented 30 channels of television divided equally between ten broadcast TV channels, ten premium or pay-per-view channels, and ten channels with original interactive programming. The system was popular with cable subscribers and ran in other cities but eventually was phased out because of financial issues and privacy concerns.
Today in 1972, Atari co-founders Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn demonstrated the first stand-alone Pong coin-operated arcade unit into Andy Cappa’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Pong, a simulated table tennis game, will go on to be the first commercially successful video game in history, overshadowing pinball games and jukeboxes. Bushnell: “To be successful, I had to come up with a game people already knew how to play; something so simple that any drunk in any bar could play.”
Atari went on to sell more than 19,000 arcade units, helping launch the video game industry. Today, video game sales are expected to grow from $66 billion in 2010 to $81 bilion in 2016, and every student in video game design school aspires to supersede and surpass Alcorn’s and Bushnell’s success.
Today is World TV Day, declared in 1996 by the UN “in recognition of the increasing impact television has on decision-making by alerting world attention to conflicts and threats to peace and security and its potential role in sharpening the focus on other major issues, including economic and social issues.”
1996 was also the year John Browning declared in the July issue of Scientific American:
“Something intriguing is happening in American homes. Computers seem to be luring away people from the television set. It’s still too early to tell if this is the long-heralded end of the 50-year obsession with the ‘idiot box.’ But it does seem to be the beginning of an affair with CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web, and as it heats up, the door is thrown open for another generation of stars.”
And today, a Wall Street Journal article titled “How to Save $10,000 by Next Thanksgivings,” started its list of saving tips with the following:
Dump the TV. “There’s no need for a TV with the Internet,” says Molly Ruben-Long, who works for a nonprofit in New Orleans. “You can watch most shows for free online.” Savings: $600 a year.
According to WorldTVPC.com, market research firm Business Insights predicts global sales of internet-enabled TVs to reach over 90 million by 2013.
The blue box built by Steve Wozniak, on display at the Computer History Museum, gift of Rick Prelinger
Today in 1963, the earliest known use of the term “hacking” appeared in The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper. From a Brief History of Hackerdom: “The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1. The Signals and Power Committee of MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club adopted the machine as their favorite tech-toy and invented programming tools, slang, and an entire surrounding culture that is still recognizably with us today.” Continue reading
Today in 1972, IBM’s Data Processing Division launched the IBM Health Care Support Electrocardiogram Analysis program, a computer program for cardiologists. Continue reading
On the left is the Dell OptiPlex GX520 from 2005, to the right is a PC’s Limited computer from 1985.
Today in 1937, Howard Aiken, an instructor in the Department of Physics at Harvard University, having been turned down by the leading manufacturer of calculators (the Monroe Calculating Machine Company), submitted a proposal to IBM, titled “Proposed Automatic Calculating Machine.” Continue reading
“…modern journalism was born via a precursor of the blog. Nobles, such as Cardinal Mazarin, hired their own “journalists” to report on scandal and sex in the city. Continue reading
Today in 1983, “the first virus was conceived of as an experiment to be presented at a weekly seminar on computer security. The concept was first introduced in this seminar by the author, and the name ‘virus’ was thought of by Len Adleman. After 8 hours of expert work on a heavily loaded VAX 11/750 system running Unix, the first virus was completed and ready for demonstration. Within a week, permission was obtained to perform experiments, and 5 experiments were performed. On November 10, the virus was demonstrated to the security seminar.”–Fred Cohen
The Story of Information 