Computers
Perl is Always Appropriate
The O’Reilly book, Programming Perl, was released in 1991. It became known as the “Camel Book” among Perl programmers and the camel became the unofficial logo for the Perl programming language.
December 18, 1987
Larry Wall releases version 1.0 of Perl, a general-purpose programming language very commonly used as a Unix scripting language. Perl became very popular on the early world wide web, commonly being used to program CGI scripts for web applications. Perl’s flexibility and adaptability continues to make it a widely used programming language to this day.
A Worm For Christmas?
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.
Douglas Englebart Demos the “Mouse”
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.
The Byte Shop Opens
December 8, 1975
Paul Terrell opens the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California, one of the first retail computer stores in the world. Besides that important distinction, Paul Terrell and the Byte Shop are most famously known for ordering the first 50 computers from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s fledgling Apple Computer company in 1976. As the story goes, the Steves initially intended the Apple I to be a kit, where buyers would solder together the chips onto the circuit board themselves. Terrell requested that instead they deliver fully-assembled computers as he was having trouble selling other kits to people who couldn’t put them together themselves. By insisting on a fully-assembled computer (even though the Apple I still lacked a case, power supply, and keyboard), Terrell helped shape the future direction of Apple and the entire personal computer industry. The Apple II was the first personal computer to be manufactured and sold as completely assembled units, making them accessible to the average user, thus igniting the personal computer revolution.