Day in Tech History

Day in Tech History


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April 27, 1998: Koko Gorilla Gets On AOL Chat
April 26, 2019

1998 – Using AOL chat, a sign language interpreter and an active audience, a female gorilla named Koko answered questions to the public. Koko resides at the Gorilla Foundation and with a vocabulary of 2,000 words, was able to respond to the chat room.

April 26, 1983: TRS-80 Model 4
April 25, 2019

1983– The Trash-80, as it was so admirably called in the day, a.k.a. the TRS-80 Model 4 is introduced. It contains a 4 MHz processor, 16 KB of RAM, a cassette interface, Keyboard and Monochrome monitor. $1000 for the base model,

April 25, 1980: Activision Formed
April 24, 2019

1980 – Activision was technically founded in 1979, but it wasn’t until April 25 that the “Fantastic Four” joined up as the first third-party software company for video games. David Crane and Alan Miller left Atari August 1979 to start programming under...

April 24, 1984: Apple IIc Introduced
April 23, 2019

1984 – Apple introduces the Apple IIc, their answer to a portable machine. It weighed 7 1/2 lbs and featured a 1.023MHz CPU and 128 KB RAM. $1,295. The device device had a built-in floppy and peripheral expansion ports.

April 23, 1964: Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) Decommissioned
April 22, 2019

1964– The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) is retired after fifteen years. SEAC was the first to use all-diode logic. SEAC was bason on EDVAC. It had 747 vacuum tubes, and the clock rate was under 1 mHz. Internet Explorer 2.

April 22, 1993: Mosaic Browser
April 21, 2019

1993 – The National Center for Supercomputing Applications releases version 1.0 (RTM) of the Mosaic Web Browser. It was the first browser with a Graphical user interface for content. Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark were the lead developers.

April 21, 1977: MITS vs Bill Gates & Microsoft: 8080 BASIC
April 20, 2019

1977 – Two days prior, Microsoft send MITS a letter with the allegation that they were not up on royalty payments and if they didn’t catch up, MITS would be in breach and the 8080 BASIC would be pulled. MITS sends a letter stating that they are not cor...

April 20, 2009: Oracle Purchases Sun Microsystems
April 19, 2019

2009 – Oracle announces they have purchased Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion dollar deal. This includes stock at $9.50 / share. That would also be the acquisition of SPARC processors, Solaris OS, Java and MySQL, among other items.

April 19, 2000: iPAQ, Cassiopeia, Jornada Released
April 18, 2019

2000– Before smartphones, Personal Digital Assistants were the device to have. You could store contacts, write memos, set up, read and send email and even play a nice game of Solitaire, or the game where you eliminated color marbles.

April 18, 2006: HD DVD Format
April 17, 2019

2006 – Toshiba launches the HD DVD format in the US. The first HD DVD players were the HD-A1 and HD-XA1. RCA would rebrand the A1 to the HDV-5000. The first HD DVD with TrueHD soundtrack was the Phantom of the Opera.