Last IBM “Stretch” Computer Shut Down
September 5, 1980
The last IBM 7030 “Stretch” mainframe in active use is decommissioned at Brigham Young University. The first Stretch was delivered to Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1961, giving the model almost 20 years of operational service. The Stretch was famous for many things, but perhaps most notably it was the first IBM computer to use transistors instead of vacuum tubes, it was the first computer to be designed with the help of an earlier computer, and it was the world’s fastest computer from 1961 to 1964.
Google Files for Incorporation
September 4, 1998
Larry Page and Sergey Brin file incorporation papers for Google in California. Filing on a Friday, the date of official incorporation would be marked as Monday, September 7th. Starting out as a privately held company, Google would hold their IPO about 6 years later on August 19, 2004.
eBay Founded
September 3, 1995
The online auction site, eBay, is launched as “AuctionWeb” by Pierre Omidyar. The first item sold, a broken laser pointer, wasn’t actually intended to sell, but rather to test the new site, itself started as a hobby. Surprised that the item sold for $14.83, Omidyar contacted the buyer to make sure he knew the laser pointer was broken, to which was replied, “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.” From that first $14.83, Omidyar is now worth billions of dollars.
First Search Engine
September 2, 1993
The world’s first primitive web search engine is started. Known as W3Catalog or the CUI WWW Catalog, it was started by Oscar Nierstrasz at the Centre Universitaire d’Informatique (CUI) of the University of Geneva. This search site lasted for about 3 years before more modernized search engines began appearing.
I could not find an actual picture of W3Catalog, only a picture of a site linking to it. Can anybody help find me a picture of W3Catalog?
First Flyby of Saturn
September 1, 1977
Pioneer 11 becomes the first man-made object to fly by Saturn.
Aldus – Adobe Merger Finalized
August 31, 2004
Aldus, the company that created PageMaker – considered the world’s first desktop publishing application – merges with Adobe, the company that created PostScript – which was the page description language powering many early laser printers. The combination of Pagemaker running on Apple’s Macintosh and printing to the Apple’s PostScript-powered LaserWriter sparked the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980’s.
First Building Block of the Internet
August 30, 1969
The first Interface Message Processor (IMP) is delivered to Leonard Kleinrock’s research group at UCLA. The IMP was the device that would interconnect networks between research facilities on the developing ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. As a packet-switching device, the IMP can be considered the first generation of what we now call network routers. The second IMP was delivered to the Stanford Research Institute on October 1, 1969 and the first message between the two IMPs was sent on October 29, 1969, which is now considered the first message ever sent on the Internet.
Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction
August 29, 1831
English scientist Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction. Electromagnetic induction is the primary principle behind electric motors and electric generators, two very important inventions that power and drive our electronic technology of today.
Snow Leopard Released; The End of AppleTalk
August 28, 2009
Apple releases Mac OS X 10.6, “Snow Leopard” for their Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was an important release as it was the first to drop support for PowerPC-based Macs and focus optimization for the Intel processor-based Macs. The networking protocol that Apple had used since the 1980’s, AppleTalk, was also discontinued in Snow Leopard. AppleTalk was the first true plug-and-play networking protocol and during its heyday in the late 80’s, AppleTalk was the most widely used networking protocol in the world.
World’s Largest Battery Backup
August 27, 2003
The city of Fairbanks, Alaska connected to what was at the time the world’s largest battery backup. Designed to help prevent serious blackouts that plagued the city every two to three years, the batteries could provide power to the city for a few minutes – enough time to start up the city’s backup diesel generators. The battery contains 13,760 cells covering more than 10,000 square feet. It was reported that in the first two years of operation, the battery system prevented at least 81 power failures.