The Breakup of Ma Bell
January 1, 1984
The original American Telephone & Telegraph Company is divested of its 22 Bell System companies as a result of the settlement of the 1974 United States Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T.
The Dawn of the Internet
January 1, 1983
The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the first component of the modern Internet.
The Beginning of Time?
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.
ENIAC Completed
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.
Hewlett and Packard Formalize Partnership
January 1, 1939
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formalize their business partnership. They decide to name the company after themselves, but choose the order of their names by a coin toss. Hewlett-Packard had a 50/50 chance of being named Packard-Hewlett.
First Ball Drop in Times Square, NYC
January 1, 1908
For the first time, a ball is dropped in New York City‘s Times Square to signify the start of the New Year at midnight.
Zune 2K Day
December 31, 2008
Playfully nicknamed “Zune 2K” day after Y2K day, owners of Microsoft Zune devices began reporting that their devices had malfunctioned and refused to boot up. The problem turned out to be a “a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year,” as described by Microsoft. The problem would fix itself on Jan 1, 2009 if users let the battery run down and then reset the device on that day. Certainly, the publicity from this gaffe couldn’t have helped the perception of the Zune in the marketplace, as by this time Apple’s iPhone had started its dominant rise. Microsoft said it would issue a bugfix for the device so that this problem wouldn’t re-occur in 2012, but by that time, Microsoft had already killed the Zune line of devices so I’m not sure if the problem was ever actually fixed.
Y2K Looms
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!
Microsoft Releases Windows 3.11
December 31, 1993
Microsoft releases version 3.11 of Windows, a minor upgrade to Windows 3.1. It became the last stable version of Windows before Windows 95 was released in August of 1995.
AT&T Takes Over Bell System
December 30, 1899
American Bell, at the time parent corporation of the AT&T company, reorganizes and transfers its assets into AT&T. American Bell was incorporated in Massachusetts and AT&T was incorporated in New York. Massachusetts corporate laws would have limited the growth of American Bell so by reorganizing, AT&T could bypass Massachusetts law by becoming the parent company of American Bell and the Bell System. Eventually AT&T would become a legalized monopoly in the United States.