This Day in Geek History: January 24 1948 IBMs Selective Sequence Electronic CalculatorInternational Business Machines (IBM) dedicates the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), also known as the Poppa, at the company’s world headquarters in New York City. The SSEC is the first computer to combine electronic computation with stored instructions, and it will be the first computer to run a stored program and the last large electromechanical computers to be built. It contains 13,500 vacuum tubes and 21,000 relays and occupies three sides of a 1,800 square foot room. Among it’s most notable accomplishments will be the calculation of a table of the Moon’s positions which will be used to plot the course of the 1969 Apollo flight. It will be decommissioned in 1952. 1950 Percy LeBaron Spencer is issued a patent for the original microwave oven, which he describes in his application as a “Method of Treating Foodstuffs.” (US No. 2,495,429) However, the first commercial microwave oven, the 1161 Radarange, won’t be marketed to the public until 1954. 1958 English nuclear scientists announce that Project Zeta has achieved the first man-made nuclear fusion reaction. The aim of Project Zeta is to achieve fusion by heating deuterium to approximately five million degrees Celsius, however, further investigation of the data will prove that no fusion actually took place. 1964 The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 7770 Audio Response Unit, which makes data within a computer available over the telephone. 1968 The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces expanded programming support for the Operating System/360 (OS/360). The system allows the IBM 2311 disk storage drive and the IBM 2314 direct access storage facility to be shared by up to four System/360 computers. 1978 The four month-old Soviet satellite Cosmos 954 burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, scattering debris over Canada’s Northwest Territories. 1984 Apple Computer releases a 3.5″ floppy. Apple Computer releases a 300-baud and 1200-baud modem. Price: US$300 and US$500, respectively Apple Computer releases a modified C.Itoh printer as the Apple ImageWriter printer. Price: US$595 Microsoft releases Microsoft BASIC and Microsoft Multiplan for the Apple Macintosh to coincide with Apple’s launch of the Macintosh computer. The release comes at the behest of Steven Jobs, who had seen what an enormous role Basic had played in the success of the Apple II. However, the development of Microsoft’s implementation was rushed to market for the Macintosh’s release and was significantly flawed. 1985 Apple Computer settles a trademark-infringement lawsuit with Management and Computer Services over the use of the word “Mac” for Macintosh computer-related products for an undisclosed sum. Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on the fifth mission of the shuttle program. It’ the first secret, shuttle mission wholly devoted to military purposes. 1986 The Voyager II space probe makes its closest approach to the previously unexplored planet Uranus. The spacecraft comes within 50,679 miles (81,500km) of the planet’s atmosphere. It will radio back thousands of images along with data that will lead to the discovery of ten new moons, several new rings, and a bizarre magnetic field. Launched on August 20, 1977, the Voyager II has already examined both Jupiter and Saturn. 1990 Andrew Milner and Phil MacKay release version 0.01 of RemoteAccess BBS (RA) software. Written in Turbo Pascal and Assembly Language, RemoteAccess is initially a QuickBBS clone, but it will quickly outstrip its competition in terms of features and popularity. The Muses-A or Hiten lunar orbiter is launched by Japan’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science. The Hiten is the first space probe not of Soviet or U.S. origin to reach a lunar orbit. However, the two-stage probe will fail to send back data. The United States Secret Service and the New York State Police raid the homes of three members of the hacker group Masters of Deception (MoD), “Acid Phreak”, “Phiber Optik” (Mark Abene), and “Scorpion” in New York City after AT&T’s national telephone system crashed. Mark Abene and other MOD members are suspected of having played a part in the incident. No charges will be filed, as AT&T will vehemently deny that hackers were involved. The cause of the crash will later be pinned on a software error. 1997 Apple Computer releases Mac OS 7.6, the first part of Apple’s new OS strategy, exactly thirteen years after the debut of the Macintosh. Microsoft releases version 5 of Visual FoxPro for Windows. Visit the official Visual FoxPro website. 1998 The website of Program One, Inc is hacked by “GiftGas”, “Sn1per”, and “SpiritWalker”. The website of TSI is hacked by “Giftgas”. 2000 At approximately 7pm GMT, the United States National Security Agency (NSA) experiences “serious” computer failures, leaving it unable to process intelligence data for seventy-two hours. Later in the week, the agency will reveal that although “no significant intelligence information has been lost,” thousands of man-hours and US$1.5 million dollars were required to remedy the situation. Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard (HP), IBM, and other computer manufacturers begin selling systems with the Windows 2000 operating system pre-installed. Norwegian authorities raid the home of Jon Lech Johansen and seize computer equipment. Johansen had gained global notoriety for releasing the DeCSS application for decrypting DVD video disks. Sun Microsystems releases the Solaris 8 operating system. Visit the official Solaris website. 2001 AOL Time Warner announces that it will cut about two thousand jobs in an effort to streamline operations. Japan’s leading daily newspaper, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, reports that the Sega Corporation has admitted that it will be discontinuing production of the Dreamcast video game system after March 2001 in favor of releasing games for rival systems. A misconfigured router leaves several Microsoft websites offline, leading to widespread speculation that the sites had been hacked. Novell releases version 7.1 of the SUSE Linux operating system. 2004 NASA’s Opportunity rover lands on Mars, arriving three weeks after the landing of its identical twin, the Spirit rover. At the World Economic Forum, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates tells audiences “two years from now, spam will be solved.” During the talk, Gates predicts the creation of an internet-wide authentication system that would verify senders’ identities and levy some form of micropayment fees on e-mail. In the journal of Physical Review Letters, a team of MIT researchers announce the creation of a new form of matter, called a fermionic condensate, sixth known form of matter, after gases, liquids, plasma, solids, and Bose-Einstein condensates, which were only discovered in 1995. A fermionic condensate is a superfluid phase formed by fermionic particles at low temperatures where a Bose–Einstein condensate is a superfluid phase formed by bosonic atoms under similar conditions. The researchers predict that fermionic condensates could help lead to the next generation of superconductors. 2006 The Walt Disney Company, the third largest media producer in the the world, agrees to purchase Pixar Animation Studios in a US$7.4 billion all-cash deal, leaving Steven Jobs Disney’s largest shareholder. 2007 Google drops the beta tag from Google Groups. In an entry on his blog, Rick Jelliffe reveals that a Microsoft employee offered to pay him to make corrections to Wikipedia articles regarding Office Open XML. In response, a Microsoft spokesperson will later defend the offer by explaining that the article had been “heavily written” by IBM employees in support of their rival OpenDocument format, though no evidence of that claim will ever be provided. 2008 Version 2.6.24 of the Linux operating system is released. 2010 Having earned a cumulative US$552.8 million domestically and another US$1.28 billion internationally (US$1.84 billion worldwide), Avatar becomes the second-highest grossing movie in history in Canada and the United States, not adjusting for inflation, as well as the best selling movie overseas in history. The movie opened December 18, 2009.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 06:26:42 +0000
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