1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company changes its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)
1959 – A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL. There was a time when ‘learning computers’ meant you learned a bit of one or more programming languages.
1969 – The four node ARPANET network is established. From this, the Internet will grow.
1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. Al Gore curiously absent, probably off getting his chakras re-aligned.
1971 – Intel releases world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004. Get ready for “personal computing”.
April 1, 1976 – Apple Computer is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, without government aid. Today they’d get millions as long as a significant percentage was rolled over into the dimmocrat campaign treasury.
1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as “spam”) is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States. You knew it had to start somewhere.
1984 – The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale. Cute. Capable. Works right out of the box. Unfortunately, Apple keeps the box closed and ferociously attacks attempts at cloning it. And that’s one reason why the PC ended up with the big piece of the pie. The other piece of the pie is that MIS (Management Information Services – the forerunner of IT) sees the letters “IBM” on the room holding their bread and butter, the mainframe, and they can’t imagine buying from any upstart like Apple.
1990 – The Windows 3.0 operating system is released by Microsoft. Apple’s Mac users snort derisively.
1993 – Version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser is released. From this code sprang Internet Explorer, and from the people who wrote it, we get Netscape, then FireFox.
1997 – NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X. I loves me some OS X.
2001 – Apple releases the iPod, a truly ground-breaking bit of entertainment technology.
2005 – YouTube is launched by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos.
Said Steve Jobs in 1983:
“Strategy is really simple. What we want to do at Apple, is we want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes … And we really want to do it with a radio link in it so you don’t have to hook up to anything and you’re in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers.”
300,000 were sold on the first day of its availability.
H/T: Mostly Cajun
No comments:
Post a Comment