Computers

January 2, 1979

Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, developers of the world’s first spreadsheet software, incorporate Software Arts to be the parent company for their product, VisiCalc. VisiCalc was introduced and then shipped later in the year and became the first “killer app” for the personal computer. By offering such a powerful business tool that anyone could run on their own computer, Bricklin and Frankston are credited with changing the perception of the personal computer from hobby into a business machine.

January 1, 2000

After years of hysteria regarding the Y2K bug, the world’s computers begin using the date 2000 with no major catastrophes. There is still debate whether the “Year 2000 Problem” was overblown by the technology industry or if the frantic updating done by armies of software developers leading up to Y2K averted disaster. I tend to lean towards the latter.

January 1, 1970

Unix epoch time begins at 00:00:00 UTC/GMT. Basically, UNIX operating systems count time in seconds starting from midnight January 1, 1970 Greenwich Mean Time. Yeah, this is beyond the threshold of geekiness for most of you, but don’t come crying to me when the Y2K38 problem bites you in the butt.

January 1, 1946

ENIAC, the first fully electronic computer, is completed by its designers John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. It would later be unveiled to the public on February 14th.

December 31, 1999

The world waits in anticipation of the year 2000 and the potential disasters that might be brought about by the Y2K bug. Personally, having worked years in a corporate environment getting ready for Y2K, I was pretty confident that nothing major would happen. So just for fun, I set up my home with a remote control to turn off all the lights in my house and the TV our friends would be watching at our New Years’ Eve party. Seconds after midnight, I pushed the remote control in my pocket and everything went out. There were definitely a few people at my house that night who thought the apocalypse had come. Technology practical jokes are so much fun!

December 26, 1982

Time Magazine awards its “Man of the Year” award to the personal computer, calling it “Machine of the Year,” the first non-human to receive the award since its creation in 1927. Describing the personal computer as 1982’s “greatest influence for good or evil,” the article titled “The Computer Moves In,” recognizes that the capabilities of the personal computer can be multiplied almost indefinitely by connecting it to a network of other computers, which can be used to access electronic databases or send electronic mail. The article stated that 80% of Americans expected that “in the fairly near future, home computers will be as commonplace as television sets or dishwashers.” Beating out other candidates such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Time stated, “There are some occasions, though, when the most significant force in a year’s news is not a single individual but a process, and a widespread recognition by a whole society that this process is changing the course of all other processes. That is why, after weighing the ebb and flow of events around the world, TIME has decided that 1982 is the year of the computer.” 724,000 personal computers were sold in 1980 and this figure doubled in both 1981 and 1982. Certainly, those who were paying attention at the time recognized that the personal computer was transforming society.

December 19, 1974

Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, otherwise known as MITS, begins selling the Altair 8800 microcomputer kit. As the base computer used toggle switches for input and LEDs for output, it was far from a personal computer as we know it today. However, it is one of the most important computers in history, for it inspired the first generation of entrepreneurs that created the personal computer industry. After the Altair 8800 appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine in December of 1974 for the January 1975 issue, MITS was flooded with orders. Expecting to sell at most 800 units, MITS sold over 5,000 units by August of 1975. A young Bill Gates and Paul Allen, excited by the possibility of small computers that could be used in the home, wrote the BASIC programming language for the Altair, their first software product which formed the basis of their future company, Microsoft. The Altair was also popular with the Homebrew Computing Club, where Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs began their partnership selling their own computer kit, the Apple I.

December 9, 1987

The Christmas Tree Worm begins to affect IBM mainframe computers around the world. The worm was delivered by e-mail and drew a Christmas tree text graphic on the user’s monitor and searched out other network users to e-mail. Named CHRISTMA EXEC because IBM systems only supported eight-character filenames, it was the world’s first widely disruptive computer worm. While the worm was not intentionally destructive, the volume of e-mails it created could disrupt a user’s work and began to overload e-mail systems. It reached IBM’s VNet e-mail network on December 15th and two days later had crippled it to the point they had to shut it down to eradicate the worm.

December 9, 1968

Douglas Englebart and his team of researchers present a 90-minute public technology demonstration including such innovations as hypertext, video conferencing, and most famously, the computer mouse. This is the first public demonstration of the mouse, witnessed by about 1,000 computer professionals in attendance.