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Life Finds a Way
June 9, 1993 The motion picture Jurassic Park premiers in Washington D.C. The highest grossing film in history at the time, the contributions of Jurassic Park to the field of special effects is perhaps as important as the original Star Wars movie 16 years prior. During the production of the movie, the decision was made to…
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One Processor to Rule Them All
June 8, 1978 Intel introduces the 16-bit 8086 processor with clock speeds of 10, 8, and 5 MHz. The 8086 would become the basis for the series of processors used in “IBM Compatible” PCs and the x86 family (later marketed under the name “Pentium”) would dominate the market in the PC era. Ironically, however, it…
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Palm Pre Released
June 6, 2009 Palm, Inc. releases the Palm Pre smartphone through Sprint in an attempt to regain marketshare, after their Treo line of smartphones is dwarfed by Apple’s iPhone. Featuring the Linux-based Palm webOS operating system, the Pre receives some praise from technical reviewers, but due to poor marketing and the rapid pace in which…
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The Apple II Enters the Market
June 5, 1977 The original Apple II computer goes on sale. The Apple II featured an a 1MHz MOS 6502 processor, an integrated keyboard, a built-in BASIC programming environment, expandable memory (4K expandable to 48K), a monitor capable of color graphics, a sound card, and eight expansion slots. To include all these features in one…
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VHS Introduced to America
June 4, 1977 The VHS videocassette format is introduced as Vidstar in North America at a press conference before the Consumer Electronics Show starts in Chicago. VHS, or Video Home System, was based on an open standard developed by JVC in 1976. As compared to the Sony Betamax format it would compete against, VHS allowed longer…
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US Soft Lands on Moon
June 2, 1966 NASA’s lunar lander Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”) on the Moon, becoming the first US spacecraft to soft-land on an extraterrestrial body. The previous Ranger program sent craft that had hard-landings (i.e. crash landings). However, the Soviet spacecraft, Luna 9, claims the honor of being the first to…
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The Day the Music Industry Changed Forever
June 1, 1999 Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker release the filesharing service Napster. The service provides a simple way for users to copy and distribute MP3 music files. It becomes an instant hit, especially among college students. Just over 6 months later, on December 7, 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will file a lawsuit…
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All Your Base Are Belong To Us
May 31, 1991 Sega releases the video game Zero Wing for the Sega Mega Drive system in Europe. The game was never released in North America, and was relatively unknown until years later when the poorly translated opening scene was popularized on the Internet. The most famous mistranslation is the phrase “All your base are belong…
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First Automobile Accident
May 30, 1896 The first auto accident on record occurs in New York City when a Duryea Motor Wagon driven by Henry Wells collides with a bicycle ridden by Evylyn Thomas. New Yorkers probably accused Henry of being from Jersey, but he was actually from Massachusetts. This Day in Tech History Tech History provided by This Day…
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Apple Newton Announced
The Newton didn’t actually go on sale until August of 1993 May 29, 1992 At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago, Apple Computer CEO John Sculley first announces the coming release of the Newton personal digital assistant to a group of reporters, explaining that the Newton “is nothing less than a revolution.” Although there…