// University Of Washignton // Author : CSE 143 student // THis is a file that contains the history of technology. // It is copy-Pasted and edited from http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/index.html // Date of prepration and discovery 10/24/02. // Read it, it contains many info. about alot of things we know about. January 1,1994 Bill Gates married long-time girlfriend Melinda French of Microsoft's marketing department. January 1,1902 Nathan Stubbfield of Murray, Kentucky, gave the first demonstration of radio broadcasting in the United States. January 2,1998 On this day in 1998, Microsoft announced its purchase of Hotmail, the Internet's leading free e-mail service. January 3,1825 The first engineering college in the United States, the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York, opened to a class of ten students. January 4,1642 1642 Isaac Newton's Birthday. January 5,1980 Hewlett-Packard introduced its first personal computer. January 6,1838 Samuel Morse demonstrated his telegraph system for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey. January 7,1927 Commercial phone service across the Atlantic started. January 9,1996 Sun Microsystems announced the formation of JavaSoft, a business unit to develop and promote its Java programming language. January 12,1987 Hewlett-Packard announced the world's first calculator capable of conceptual algebra and calculus. January 12,1896 Dr. Henry Louis Smith fired a bullet into a corpse's hand and then took a fifteen-minute X-ray photograph to reveal the exact location of the bullet. January 15,1992 Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, released a simple line-mode Web browser on the Internet. January 17,1706 Ben Franklin was born. January 17,1981 The author of this text file was born. WoW!!! January 24,1984 The first Macintoshes became available for a price of $2,495. January 25,1961 President John F. Kennedy gave the first televised presidential press conference in the State Department auditorium. January 26,1983 Lotus 1-2-3 became the "killer app" that drove demand for the IBM PC. January 26,1998 Motorola agreed to license Sun Microsystems' Java technologies, paving the way for Java's use in cell phones, smart cards, and embedded automobile computers. January 27,1880 Thomas Edison patented the incandescent electric lamp. January 28,1997 In less than four hours, Ian Goldberg, a graduate student at Berkeley, broke into the most secure encryption code that the United States allowed to be exported. January 29,1996 Sun exhibited a prototype of a simple, inexpensive computer that allowed users to surf the Web or corporate networks. January 31,1958 the United States launched Explorer 1, the country's first satellite. February 4,1996 Microsoft canceled work on its long-delayed Blackbird tool, meant to speed content development for the Microsoft Network's proprietary online service. February 5,1996 Bank of America opened a branch on America Online, allowing customers to bank on the Internet. February 6,1985 Microsoft announced it would develop a word processing program for the IBM PC. February 7,1915 the first wireless message was sent from a moving train to a station. February 9,1994 Digital introduced two more powerful workstations, priced between $5,000 and $8,000. February 10,1996 IBM's chess-playing computer, Deep Blue, won the first game of a six-game match against Gary Kasparov, the world's champion chess grandmaster. February 10,1902 Walter Brattain, together with William Shockley and John Bardeen, invented the transistor was born. February 11,1847 Thomas Edison ,who had a tremendous impact on modern technology, was born. February 12,1997 The State of Texas launched an investigation into Microsoft's business practices on the Internet. February 12,1877 the first telephone news dispatch was called into the Boston Globe in Boston from Salem, Massachusetts, using equipment provided by Alexander Graham Bell. February 12,1924 The first advertising-sponsored radio program debuted. February 14,1946 J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania demonstrated the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) for the first time. February 15,1995 police arrested Kevin Mitnick on suspicion of stealing 20,000 credit-card numbers from the Internet service provider Netcom. . February 16,1994 Apple announced a digital color camera that could download images directly to computers. February 16,1880 Engineers from eight states founded the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. February 16,1948 NBC's East Coast network broadcast the first daily newsreel. February 17,1874 Thomas Watson, Sr., built IBM into the largest manufacturer of data processing equipment in the world was born. February 19,1878 Thomas Edison accidentally invented the phonograph while attempting to improve the telegraph. February 20,1996 Microsoft named Brad Silverberg head of a new Internet division. February 21,1963 General Telephone and Electronics Corporation of Bayside, New York, demonstrated a television transmitter and receiver that used laser beams to carry television signals. February 22,1995 Cray Research Inc. unveiled a new supercomputer, three-to-five-times faster than its predecessor. February 22,1995 On February 22, 1995, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), a federally funded center at Carnegie Melon University, warned the public that a security flaw could let hackers penetrate UNIX machines through the Web and read, write, or destroy nearly any file in the system. February 23,1996 Netscape confirmed that computer researchers at Princeton University had found a potential security flaw in Netscape's browser. February 25,1996 Two bills that would allow the export of stronger encryption software and establish rules for allowing the government "keys" to encoded messages . February 25,1928 The Federal Radio Commission issued the first television license to Charles Francis Jenkins Laboratories in Washington, D.C. February 26,1991 Tim Berners-Lee presented an early version of a Web browser to a work group at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. Februry 27,1914 The first long-distance call over underground cables took place between Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. February 29,1988 AT&T announced that it would continue to make UNIX available to all computer makers. February 29,1988 Lotus challenged Microsoft's SQL server with a new database system of its own. . 3/1/1988 Apple Computer unveiled its first CD-ROM drive for the Apple II and Macintosh computers. 3/1/1994 Apple began shipping the DOS-compatible Quadra 610, which allowed users to switch back and forth between the Macintosh operating system and Windows. 3/2/1847 Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell laid the foundation for modern communications with his work on the telephone, telegraph, and voice recording was born. 3/3/1998 Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told Congress to keep its hands off the software industry and denied that his company held a monopoly. 3/3/1864 The National Academy of Sciences was approved by President Abraham Lincoln. 3/7/1876 twenty-nine-year-old Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone, which he invented as a result of his work with the deaf. 3/7/1793 John Herschel, a mathematician and astronomer, studied at Cambridge with Charles Babbage, the pioneer of the electronic computer was born. 3/14/1986 Microsoft completed a successful initial public offering. 3/14/1879 Einstein's revolutionary theories introduced entirely new ways of thinking about time, space, and gravity, and he profoundly affected the way scientific inquiry occurred was born. 3/22/1994 In a belated attempt to battle the popularity of Microsoft's word processing and spreadsheet suite Microsoft Office, software company Novell purchased WordPerfect Corporation, makers of the classic word processing program, and Borland International's spreadsheet business. 3/22/1993 Intel began shipping production versions of the Pentium processor,yboth faster and cheaper than the 486 chip introduced in 1989. 3/25/1996 A team of Princeton University researchers announced they had found a serious security flaw in Sun Microsystems' Java programming language. 3/28/1995 Adobe's quest to establish a common standard for sharing documents on the Internet gained momentum when IBM and Netscape agreed to support Adobe Acrobat. 3/30/1951 Presper Eckert and John Mauchly formed one of the first two computer start-ups, Electronic Control Company, in 1946 (Engineering Research Associates, the other early start-up, was founded the same year), to manufacture the first commercial computer, UNIVAC. 3/31/1993 Lou Gerstner was approved as IBM's next chairman at a salary of $3.5 million in 1993-$2 million in base salary and a $1.5 million bonus for reaching performance goals. 4/2/1948 John Mauchly, a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School, wrote a report proposing an electronic computer for calculating ballistic missile firing tables. 4/2/1879 The first commercial telephone service using toll lines began . 4/2/1996 The April 2, 1996, initial public offering of search engine Lycos was the first in a rash of search engine IPO's. 4/3/1997 Microsoft launched Seattle Sidewalk, the first of its local entertainment guides. Sidewalk offered reviews of restaurants, concerts, and other events, as well as showtimes for movies and real-time traffic maps. 4/3/1997 The Federal Communications Commission agreed on a plan to speed the adoption of digital television. 4/3/1986 IBM unveiled the PC Convertible, a twelve-pound laptop. 4/3/1987 IBM unveiled its new PS/2 line of computers in a splashy Miami Beach debut, featuring a laser-light show and indoor fireworks. 4/8/1991 Cray Research unveiled a new supercomputer at a trade show in Japan, announcing it would focus on lower-priced supercomputers in the future. 4/15/1998 IBM slashed prices on two Network Station computers, offering them for less than $500. 4/15/1991 Microsoft acknowledged that the Federal Trade Commission had launched a broad antitrust investigation that would probe virtually every aspect of Microsoft's business. 4/17/1986 IBM announced it would manufacture the first computers using the megabit memory chip, capable of storing more than one million bits of electronic data. 4/20/1957 The Westinghouse-Bettis nuclear power plant became the first commercial users of FORTRAN, soon to be the dominant computer language for scientific applications. 4/20/1998 U.S. West announced it would deliver digital TV programming and high-speed Internet access using traditional copper telephone wires. 4/23/1998 In a joint venture with Rubbermaid's Little Tikes toy division, IBM demonstrated a computer for children ages three to seven. 4/25/1935 Sherman Gifford, president of the American Telephone Company in New York, and T.G. Miller, a vice president sitting about fifty feet away, spoke to each other via a call that was routed by 23,000 miles of telephone wire and radio connections through San Francisco, Java, Amsterdam, London, and back to New York. 4/28/1997 A San Jose chip-maker announced a major innovation in its semiconductor manufacturing process, the latest example of a trend toward rapidly shrinking microchip circuits. 4/28/1997 Thomas Consumer Electronics and Compaq announced a modified Compaq PC with a 36-inch computer monitor. 4/30/1992 CERN, the European particle physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland, released a milestone document, declaring that World Wide Web technology (developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN) would be free to anyone, with no fees due to CERN. 5/1/1998 Disney bought Internet company Starwave from high-tech entrepreneur and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. 5/4/1993 Software baron and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen filed documents announcing his intention to buy America Online 5/4/1992 Hewlett-Packard unveiled a new fax machine that printed on plain paper instead of the special fax paper used by most fax machines at the time. 5/5/1993 Microsoft announced it woyld bundle its popular database software, Microsoft Access, with its Microsoft Office package, which already included MS Word and Excel. 5/5/1998 Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Justice Department officials met for two hours on this day in 1998 but failed to resolve their differences. 5/5/1994 Atari Corporation, maker of the explosively popular new video games in the late 1970s and early 1980s, announced that its Jaguar video games would soon be available for personal computers. 5/6/1949 EDSAC, the world's first practical stored-program computer, came to life in Cambridge, England. EDSAC's predecessor, ENIAC, had to be wired especially for each type of problem it was given.. 5/7/1998 Apple unveiled a new personal computer, the iMac, which became an overnight success. 5/10/1927 The Hotel Statler of Boston installed radio headsets in 1,300 rooms. 5/13/1997 Barnes & Noble joined the race for online book sales by launching its online superstore just one day after suing rival Amazon.com. 5/16/1995 Dell introduced a dual processor desktop computer, designed to run two Intel Pentium processors. 5/16/1925 Arthur Atwater Kent, aboard the blimp The Los Angeles called his wife, Mabel Lucas Kent, in a car in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 5/17/1991 Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist on fellowship at CERN (the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland), presented the architecture for the World Wide Web to a CERN committee and released a version of the Web on CERN's computers. 5/17/1943 The U.S. Army contracted with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop an electronic computer . 5/17/1877 Alexander Graham Bell answered the first interstate telephone call, from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to New York City. 5/19/1998 the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft, alleging that the company's business practices crushed competition and stifled innovation. 5/19/1997 Microsoft launched New York Sidewalk, the second in its string of city guides. 5/19/1997 Hewlett-Packard joined the race in the palm-top computer market, shipping its first Windows CE handheld device. 5/22/1990 Microsoft unveiled Windows 3.0 at gala events in twenty cities around the world, linked by satellite to a theater in New York City. 5/22/1993 Cult science-fiction director David Blaire uploaded a digital film to the Internet. 5/22/1996 The General Accounting Office told a Senate committee that Defense Department computers had sustained an estimated 250,000 attacks by hackers in 1995, and that the rate of attacks was doubling yearly. 5/25/1790 Congress enacted the first copyright protection law . 5/28/1998 In a defiant stance against Microsoft, Gateway announced it would modify Windows 98 to highlight Gateway's Internet service and offer consumers a choice of Web browsing software. 5/28/1929 The first movie with sound and color debuted on May 28, 1929. The movie, Warner Brothers' On with the Show, debuted at New York City's Winter Garden in Technicolor. 5/30/1992 Charles Geschke, president of Adobe Systems, was rescued after kidnappers held him hostage for four days. 5/30/1986 The European Space Agency launched a rocket carrying the Intelsat V communications satellite. The unmanned rocket, however, experienced a malfunction during launch and had to be destroyed. 6/1/1890 some 45,000 census counters set out to count America's sixty million plus population. 6/1/1880 The first pay telephone service began on June 1, 1880, in New Haven, Connecticut. The pay phone was located in the office of the Connecticut Telephone Company. 6/4/1996 Microsoft announced it would license Visual Basic for Applications, a programming tool that made it easier to customize Microsoft applications. 6/5/1977 the Apple II personal computer went on sale. The machine, which sold for $1,298, was the first commercially successful personal computer. 6/8/1994 Apple Computer introduced QuickTime VR, a multimedia software presenting 360-degree views of scenes, allowing users to zoom in onyobjects for a closer look. 6/10/1936 The first telecast sent via coaxial cable was broadcast. 6/10/1993 Compaq announced plans to make a pen-based computer. The computer, developed jointly with Microsoft, would allow users to make a remote connection to their office computers. 6/14/1951 John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert demonstrated and dedicated UNIVAC I, the first electronic computer for commercial use, at the Census Bureau in Philadelphia. 6/18/1962 Telephone service began on the transoceanic cable . 6/20/1996 Launching an attack on Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, Oracle released InterOffice, a program that allowed multiple users to work together on documents. 6/22/1910 German computer pioneer Konrad Zuse built a small electromechanical binary calculator in his parents' living room in 1941. 6/30/1948 John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley demonstrated their invention, the transistor, for the first time. 6/30/1946 the U.S. Army officially accepted ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the world's first electronic general-purpose digital computer. 7/2/1985 The first version of Windows was shipped. 7/2/1917 The first phone call from an airplane was received at Langley Field, Virginia. 7/4/1997 Web surfers viewed the first-ever photos of the surface of Mars, transmitted by the Sojourner, a roving robot deposited by the Mars Pathfinder, an unmanned spacecraft. 7/5/1951 English-born William Shockley, working at Bell Telephone Labs, announced the invention of the junction transistor. 7/7/1920 a naval seaplane flew 95 miles, from Norfolk, Virginia, to a battleship at sea, and returned, guided entirely by radio signals. 7/10/1962 Telstar 1, the first commercial communications satellite, was launched . 7/10/1949 The first practical rectangular television was announced by the Kimble Glass Company of Toledo, Ohio. 7/13/1938 200 people paid 25 cents each to see a television show aired at the Massachusetts Television Institute, the first television theater. 7/22/1962 The potential dangers presented by software bugs became clear to the public when a software error downed the Mariner I spacecraft. 7/22/1998 Bill Gates, chairman and chief executive of Microsoft, named Steve Ballmer president of Microsoft. 7/22/1996 Visa International and VeriSign, an Internet-security company, said they had developed a system for secure payment over the Internet. 7/22/1997 Apple launched Mac OS 8, the biggest upgrade of the Macintosh operating system to hit the market since 1991. 7/25/1925 a radio station in Schenectady, New York, owned by General Electric, broadcast with a 50,000-watt transmitter, the most powerful transmitter used to date. 7/29/1947 ENIAC, one of the world's first digital computers, was turned back on after receiving a memory implant . 7/30/1998 A federal court ordered Microsoft to give Windows 95 source code to a tiny Utah software maker. 7/30/1964 Ranger 7, an unmanned lunar module, transmitted pictures from the Moon's surface. 8/1/1990 Ashton Tate released a new version of its software package, dBase IV. 8/2/1922 Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell laid the foundation for modern communications with his work on the telephone, the telegraph, and voice recording dies. 8/3/1994 The media reported that two House subcommittees requested that the General Accounting Office investigate recent hang-ups in NASDAQ's computer-based trading system. 8/3/1753 Charles Stanhope, a British earl, invented two early mechanical calculators as well as a printing press, a microscope lens, and various other scientific devices. 8/3/1858 The first undersea telegraph line was completed . 8/7/1944 The world's first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (popularly called the Harvard Mark I) was dedicated. 8/7/1998 Microsoft agreed to invest $150 million in the struggling Apple Computer and agreed to adapt its Office software applications to run on the Macintosh during the next five years. 8/9/1892 Thomas Edison recyived a patent for the two-way telegraph, which allowed operators to send messages simultaneously over one wire. 8/11/1987 Apple chairman John Sculley introduced HyperCard, the first widely used hypertext program. 8/14/1991 IBM announced a notebook computer with a cellular modem. 8/14/1984 IBM introduced a new computer, the PC-AT, and announced a new software program that would provide a graphical user interface. 8/14/1959 IBM introduced a new computer, the PC-AT, and announced a new software program that would provide a graphical user interface. 8/14/1996 Microsoft, which launched its new Internet browser on August 11, apologized publicly to consumers who were having difficulty downloading the product. 8/17/1997 One of the largest information companies in the world shut down a Web site after a technical bug sent credit reports to the wrong people. 8/19/1662 Blaise Pascal, a French writer, religious philosopher, and physicist, was also a prominent mathematician. 8/20/1911 the NewYour time ksent the first around-the-world telegram via commercial service. 8/20/1920 The first commercial radio station began broadcasting . 8/22/1949 BINAC, the first stored-memory computer built in the United States, was accepted by Northrop Corporation, which had contracted to buy the custom-made computer for about $100,000. 8/24/1995 In the most publicized software release in history, Microsoft's Windows 95 software went on sale. 8/25/1925 Howard Weinhart of New Jersey received a patent for a miniature television tube, which he called an "electric discharge device. 8/27/1910 The first radio broadcast from an airplane in flight was sent. 8/30/1994 IBM announced it would not oppose Microsoft's attempt to trademark the name "Windows." Microsoft had lobbied for four years to trademark the term. 8/30/1969 BBN, the company contracted by the Defense Department to build networking machines to serve as the backbone of ARPANET, the Internet's precursor, shipped its first machine on this day in 1969 to the University of California at Los Angeles. 9/1/1995 Microsoft offered new Windows 95 disks to customers experiencing problems installing the new operating system, which had gone on sale in late August 1995. 9/1/1991 U.S. technology firms were permitted to sell high-tech products ranging from computers to passenger jets to countries in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. 9/5/1997 Capitol Records said it would be the first major recording company to release a single online before selling it in stores. The single, Duran Duran's "Electric Barbarella," was released September 9. 9/8/1997 WorldCom bought CompuServe Corp. from its parent company, H&R Block. 9/8/1994 Microsoft announced that its long-awaited operating system would be called Windows 95. 9/11/1940 The first demonstration of remote computing occurred. 9/11/1946 The firs long-distance car-to-car phone call was placed. 9/11/2001 Attack on America. 9/12/1994 Marc Andreessen, founder of Mosaic Communications Corp., introduced a new Web browser program called Mosaic Netscape, to be released in October 1994. 9/12/1958 The first integrated circuit was tested. 9/15/1986 Apple introduced a new version of the Apple IIGS personal computer called the Apple IIg, aimed at schools and home users. 9/17/1996 Video game-maker Sega of America said it would launch an Internet hookup for its video-gamers in October. 9/22/1995 A member of the Cypherpunk news group, an online forum where mathematicians and hackers discussed cryptography, discovered a serious flaw in Netscape's Internet browser. 9/22/1997 IBM announced a breakthrough in computer chip technology on this day in 1997. The company said it had developed a way to make computer chips with copper instead of aluminum. 9/22/1997 Compaq announced it had shipped the Deskpro NetPC, the first computer in a class of stripped-down Internet machines jointly proposed by Compaq, Intel, and Microsoft. 9/24/1990 Sony Corp. announced it would begin selling two digital audio tape players, one a car version andythe other a walkman version, in December. 9/25/1956 the first transatlantic phone call placed over the transoceanic telephone cable took place. 9/25/1991 Newspapers reported that Borland International and Ashton-Tate's shareholders had approved a high-profile merger of the two companies. 9/28/1994 Sony said it would begin shipping a twenty-ounce device called MagicLink, which could retrieve and filter e-mail or find information on an online service network. 9/29/1915 The first transcontinental demonstration of radio telephone occurred. 9/29/1987 Compaq unveiled a portable computer equipped with a 386 chip, the newest and most powerful chip on the market at the time. 9/29/1997 At a trade show in San Jose, Microsoft released Windows CE version 2, designed to support processors embedded in hand-held devices and home appliances. 9/30/1980 Xerox, working with Intel and Digital Equipment Company, published the specifications for Ethernet. 9/30/1995 Microsoft released Microsoft Excel, which it claimed was the fastest spreadsheet available for the IBM PC. 10/2/1989 America online ( AOL) was named. 10/3/1952 The first video recording on high-definition magnetic tape was made. 10/3/1991 AT&T would set up "portable offices" for travelers in airports. The company planned to install pay phones with computer screens and remote hookups and to charge $2.50 for the first ten minutes and $1 for each additional ten- minute block. 10/4/1957 Russia launched the world's first satellite, Sputnik, thus kicking off the satellite race that accelerated the development of international telephone and television transmissions. 10/5/1919 the first conversation between a submerged submarine and a ship took place. 10/6/1911 The first transpacific radio conversation took place on this day in 1911 between Japan and California. 10/7/1997 Sun filed a lawsuit against Microsoft over the software giant's use of Java. Sun accused Microsoft of attempting to disrupt Java development by distributing a version of Java that was incompatible with that used by the rest of the industry. 10/7/1922 The first program to be broadcast by a network of radio stations aired. 10/8/1895 Sound recording pioneer Emil Berliner founded the Berliner Gramophone Company in Philadelphia. 10/9/1947 Northrop Aircraft signed a contract with Presper Eckert and John Mauchly to buy a digital computer called BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer). 10/9/1876 The first telephone conversation over outdoor wires took place. 10/9/1894 The first magic lantern feature, a precursor to cinema, was shown. 10/11/1988 A network of hundreds of computers in the United States, Europe, and Australia successfully factored a 100-digit number. 10/13/1940 The first oral and visual telecommunication by deaf people happened. 10/14/1968 The first live telecast from space was made. 10/15/1990 Apple Computer replaced most of the Macintosh line with new, lower cost computers. 10/15/1997 Microsoft Sidewalk, a series of local online entertainment guides, showcasing food, theater, fashion, and music, debuted in Denver and Houston. 10/16/1899 Wireless radio was used to broadcast the results of a yacht race off the coast of Long Island, New York. 10/16/1985 Intel unveiled a 32-bit microprocessor, the 386. 10/17/1949 The first long-distance dial telephone service began. 10/17/1931 Thomas Edison died on this day in 1931. Born in 1847, Edison was responsible for such major technological innovations as the electric light bulb, the phonograph, and improvements to the telegraph and telephone. 10/17/1842 The first telegraph cable was laid . 10/18/1960 The first fully automated post office system was put into service. 10/21/1948 The first high-speed radio fax was sent. 10/21/1925 The first demonstration of a photoelectric cell took place. 10/22/1996 Microsoft launched Expedia, an online travel service. 10/23/1998 Corel announced it would make a version of its WordPerfect word processor for the Linux operating system available for free over the Internet. 10/23/1924 The first radio network broadcast to the West Coast was received. 10/23/1990 Motorola announced it had developed technology to send data at high speeds within office buildings using digital radio transmission. 10/25/1960 The Accutron, the world's first electronic watch, went on sale . 10/26/1994 Apple had launched a new product called the Macintosh TV--a computer, television, and CD player all in one. 10/28/1955 William Henry Gates was born on this day in 1955 in Seattle, Washington. 10/30/1925 Scottish TV pioneer John Baird created Great Britain's first TV transmitter. 10/31/1997 The long-awaited sequel to Myst, the smash hit computer game that helped popularize CD-ROMs, was released. 11/1/1998 Broadcasters in the nation's ten largest markets officially began broadcasting digital signals. 11/1/1983 IBM introduced its long-awaited home computer, the PC Jr., starting at $669. 11/2/1988 A computer virus raced across networks and shut down computers at NASA, the University of California at Berkeley, MIT, and other sites by Cornell University student Robert Morris. 11/3/1971 The UNIX Programmer's Manual, the first written documentation for UNIX, was released. 11/3/1988 some fourteen technology companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, had created a committee to develop a version of the Java programming language to run on electronic devices. 11/3/1953 The first coast-to-coast live telecast in color aired. 11/6/1928 The first electric flashing sign was installed on all four sides of The New York Times building in New York City. 11/10/1983 Microsoft announced its first graphical user interface, to be called Windows 1.0, which would allow users to multitask. 11/12/1990 Tim Berners-Lee circulated a draft of a proposal for a hypertext system, which he called the World Wide Web. 11/13/1996 Networking company Novell and Sun Microsystems announced on this day in 1996 that Novell would license several Java products from Sun while Sun would license Novell's directory technology for managing access to computer networks. 11/14/1994 Bill Gates paid $30.8 million for a sixteenth-century Leonardo da Vinci manuscript, which depicted the motion of water and the principles of the steam engine. 11/15/1926 The National Broadcasting Company began broadcasting on twenty-four stations across the country. 11/15/1938 The first live on-the-scene television news broadcast was transmitted . 11/17/1996 Windows officially introduced Windows CE, an operating system for hand-held devices. 11/17/1998 a Federal judge ordered Microsoft to make Windows comply with Sun's standards for the Java programming language. 11/18/1963 The first push-button telephone went into service. 11/18/1996 Four hardware makers unveiled hand-held computers at an electronics show. 11/18/1997 according to Microsoft executives, some 200,000 certificates of authenticity and 100,000 CD-ROMs had been stolen from Microsoft by armed robbers. 11/22/1985 Microsoft signed an agreement with Apple, allowing Microsoft to copy visual characteristics of Apple's Macintosh in its Microsoft Windows software. 11/22/1953 The first commercially-sponsored program to be broadcast in color aired. 11/23/1969 The first space-to-ground news conference was telecast. 11/25/1996 After three days of negotiations, the television and computer industries compromised on a plan that would allow federal regulators to schedule the switch to digital TV. 11/25/1923 American listeners heard the first program transmitted from Great Britain . 11/26/1997 Swedish telecommunications company L.M. Ericsson announced on November 26, 1997, that it had developed technology to provide simultaneous telephone service and Internet access over the same phone line. 11/27/1998 Pentagon officials said that United States nuclear weapons were being tested for potential Year 2000 problems. 12/1/1955 The first remote-control railroad passenger car went into service. 12/1/1959 A camera mounted on the nose of a Thor missile took the first color picture of Earth from ypace. 12/4/1987 IBM shipped the first version of its multitasking operating system, OS/2. 12/4/1995 Netscape, Sun, and two dozen other vendors announced JavaScript, which helped transform ordinary, brochure-like Web sites into dynamic applications. 12/4/1996 The first electric car to be mass-produced rolled off the assembly line. 12/7/1995 Bill Gates announced on this day in 1995 that Microsoft would shift its entire business focus to the Internet. 12/8/1888 twenty-eight-year-old Herman Hollerith installed his punch calculator machine at the War Department in Washington, D.C.. 12/10/1997 In the latest blow in its battle with Microsoft, on December 10, 1997, Sun announced a product called Activator, designed to make Microsoft's Web browser work smoothly with programs written in "official" Java. 12/11/1882 The first theater lit by electric lights was illuminated. 12/13/1994 The first meeting of the World Wide Web (W3) Consortium took place in Cambridge at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 12/16/1996 IBM announced on this day in 1996 it would stop selling computers that used that PowerPC chip and ran Windows NT. 12/17/1996 Intel Corporation and the Energy Department announced the development of a high-speed computer capable of performing more than one trillion calculations per second. 12/18/1958 Project SCORE, the world's first experimental communications satellite, was launched . 12/19/1974 The personal computer revolution was launched quietly on this day in 1974, when the Altair 8800, a do-it-yourself computer kit, went on sale for $397. 12/19/1958 The first radio broadcast from an orbiting satellite took place . 12/20/1984 Bell Labs announced that it had developed the long-awaited megabit memory chip. The chip could store more than one million bits of electronic data, quadrupling the capacity of existing chips. 12/21/1998 Microsoft asked a district court judge for more time to meet the court's specifications regarding the Java programming language. 12/25/1973 a massive crash paralyzed the fledgling ARPANET, which connected dozens of universities and research institutions around the country. 12/26/1878 John Wanamaker installed electric lights in his department store in Philadelphia. 12/26/1933 Edwin Armstrong, an electrical engineer at Columbia University, patented frequency modulation (FM) radio. 12/28/1972 The first stereo telecast took place. 12/31/1879 the Pennsylvania Railroad ran special trains to Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratory so the public could witness a demonstration of his newest invention, the incandescent light bulb.