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Microsoft Incorporated
June 25, 1981 Founded six years earlier by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft officially incorporated as a company. The timing of the incorporation was about 2 months ahead of the release of the IBM PC, which would soon change the fortune of Microsoft and the entire technology industry. Microsoft Incorporated is original content of…
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iPhone 4 Goes on Sale
June 24, 2010 After a wild lead-up involving a prototype being lost at a bar, Apple’s iPhone 4 officially went on sale. Later the iPhone 4 would then become the subject of the Antennagate controversy. With so much attention given to the phone, it was no wonder it went on to set sales records. iPhone…
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QWERTY Typewriter Patented
June 23, 1868 The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, the first practical and commercially successful typewriter, is patented. Perhaps most notable in the design of the Sholes and Glidden (which would later become the Remington No. 1 typewriter) is the use of the QWERTY keyboard, which is still the most popular keyboard layout in the world.…
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Jet Mail
June 22, 1946 In a demonstration of the capabilities of jet aircraft, Army Air Corps pilots Kenneth Chilstrom and Robert Baird transport mail in a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, thus making the first delivery of mail by jet aircraft. Jet Mail is original content of This Day in Tech History. This Day in Tech History…
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SpaceShipOne – First Private Space Flight
June 21, 2004 Financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, SpaceShipOne becomes the first spacecraft developed by the free market to enter spaceflight. Launched from a mothership named White Knight, SpaceShipOne flew just beyond the atmosphere into the threshold of space then glided back to Earth. SpaceShipOne would later win the $ 10 million Ansari X…
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SEAC Machine Dedicated
June 20, 1950 The National Bureau of Standards dedicated the SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) in Washington. The SEAC was the first computer to use all-diode logic, a technology more reliable than vacuum tubes, and was the first stored-program computer completed in the United States. Magnetic tape in the external storage units stored programming information,…
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Viking 1 Enters Mars Orbit
June 19, 1976 The Viking 1 spacecraft enters the into orbit around the planet Mars 10 months after being launched from Earth. Viking 1 would become the first US spacecraft to land on Mars and the first spacecraft overall to successfully soft land and perform a mission on Mars. Viking 1 Enters Mars Orbit is…
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Microsoft Introduces BASIC for 8086
June 18, 1979 In use at the time by over 200,000 computers with the Z80 and 8080 processors, Microsoft BASIC is introduced for the 8086 16-bit microprocessor. By being one of the first to offer a version of the BASIC programming language for a 16-bit processor and making it compatible with their 8-bit versions of BASIC,…
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DES Cracked
June 17, 1997 A group of users organized over the Internet cracked the Data Encryption Standard — the strongest legally exportable encryption software in the United States — after five months of work. The United States bans stronger encryption software out of fear that it would be used by terrorists, but companies designing the software say such…
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Ford Motor Company Incorporated
June 16, 1903 Henry Ford incorporates the Ford Motor Company with ten investors and $ 28,000. Ford will begin building automobiles on Mack Avenue in Detroit in a converted factory that previously produced wagons. Ford Motor Company Incorporated is original content of This Day in Tech History. This Day in Tech History Tech History provided…