Archive for June 2025
VHS Introduced to America
June 4, 1977
The VHS videocassette format is introduced as Vidstar in North America at a press conference before the Consumer Electronics Show starts in Chicago. VHS, or Video Home System, was based on an open standard developed by JVC in 1976. As compared to the Sony Betamax format it would compete against, VHS allowed longer playtime, faster rewinding, and fast-forwarding.
Would You Like to Play a Game?
June 3, 1983
The science fiction film WarGames is released. Notable for bringing the hacking phenomena to the attention of the American public, it ignites a media sensation regarding the hacker sub-culture. The film’s NORAD set is the most expensive ever built at the time at a cost of $1 million dollars. Not widely known is that the movie studio provided the film’s star, Matthew Broderick, with the arcade games Galaga and Galaxian so he could get first-hand experience before shooting the film’s arcade scenes.
US Soft Lands on Moon
June 2, 1966
NASA’s lunar lander Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”) on the Moon, becoming the first US spacecraft to soft-land on an extraterrestrial body. The previous Ranger program sent craft that had hard-landings (i.e. crash landings). However, the Soviet spacecraft, Luna 9, claims the honor of being the first to soft-land on the moon, almost exactly 4 months prior to Surveyor 1.
The Day the Music Industry Changed Forever
June 1, 1999
Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker release the filesharing service Napster. The service provides a simple way for users to copy and distribute MP3 music files. It becomes an instant hit, especially among college students. Just over 6 months later, on December 7, 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will file a lawsuit against the service, alleging mass copyright infringement. Eventually this lawsuit will force the shutdown of the company on September 3, 2002, but not before the popularity of downloading digital music is firmly entrenched in a generation of Internet users.