Day in Tech History
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December 5, 1965: First Computer Science Degree: Richard Wexelblat
1965 – Richard Wexelblat was the first candidate to complete his doctoral dissertation, hence giving him a degree in “Computer Science“. It was presented at the University of Pennsylvania – Moore School of Electrical Engineering.
December 4, 1985: Cray X-MP/48 Supercomputer
1985 – The Cray X-mp/48 Supercomputer begins operation in San Diego Supercomputer Center in California. The $15 million dollar supercomputer could process 400 megaflops (200 per processor). It was a shared-memory parallel vector processor and supported...
December 3, 1981: Disbanding of IBM Data Processing Division
1981 – For many years, whenever something came out, it was “IBM’s Data Processing Division releases”… Well, on Dec 3rd 1981, IBM decided and announced that the Data Processing Division was going to be absorbed into the IBM National Accounts Division (N...
December 2, 1991: Apple Quicktime
1991 – What was first a Multimedia add-on for System 6, Quicktime has spent 21 years being Apples’ proprietary player. The original version contained graphics, animation and Video codecs – What was refered to as “Road Pizza”.
December 1, 2013: The Amazon Flying Drone Project
2013 – Jeff Bezos is interviewed on the show “60 Minutes” on CBS with Charlie Rose. During his interview he unveils a project Amazon has been working on – Flying drone delivery. This secret R&D project called “Octocopter” will have drones fly the packa...
November 30, 1959: $2.9 Million IBM 7090 Mainframe
1959 – Want to see a 2.9 million dollar computer? That was the IBM 7090 – a transistorized mainframe computer that was designed for scientific research and tech applications. It replaced the 709 series, which used vacuum tubes.
November 29, 1972: First Pong Machine
1972 – Andy Cappa’s tavern in CA was the site for the first Pong game was wheeled into the establishment. The coin-operated game was put in by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell and game designer Al Alcorn. The duo decided that making their own game – rat...
November 28, 1983: Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000
1983 – To counter IBM, Tandy releases the Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000 computer. It housed the 80186 processor and 128 KB of RAM. There were 2 – 720 KB floppy drives and the MS–DOS Operating System. The prices ranged from $2,750.
November 27, 1998: Sega Dreamcast Launched in Japan
1998 – Sega releases their next generation console – the Dreamcast – in Japan. It didn’t get released in the US until Sept 9 1999, but it was one of the more successful console launches of it’s time.The Dreamcast had a 200 MHz processor with on-die 128...
November 26, 2001 Intel at TeraHertz
2001 – One problem with technology is that you hit limitations, mostly due to materials used or how small machines can make parts like transistors. For instance, today’s multi-core x86 processors will eventually be replaced because we won’t be able to ...