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A Virus on Christmas?
December 25, 1987 The Christmas virus begins to effect IBM mainframe computers around the world. Technically defined as a worm, the Christmas virus drew a Christmas tree text graphic on the victim’s monitor and searched out other network users. Named CHRISTMA EXEC because IBM systems only supported eight-character filenames, it was the world’s first widely disruptive computer worm. The…
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GIF Madness!
December 24, 1994 Seven years after introducing the GIF format, during which it became a defacto standard because of its efficient compression algorithm, Compuserve reaches a licensing agreement with Unisys over the use of the patented LZW method in the GIF specification. CompuServe was not aware of the patent when it used the LZW technique…
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First Men to Orbit the Moon
The view of Earth rising over the lunar surface from Apollo 8 December 23, 1968 Astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William Anders become the first men to orbit the Moon. Flying in Apollo 8, the men perform 10 total lunar orbits and test many of the procedures that will be used in future lunar…
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The First Electric Christmas Tree Lights
December 22, 1882 Edward Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison, has walnut-sized bulbs made specifically for him to wire his Christmas Tree with electric light. The 80 red, white, and blue bulbs formed the first set of electric Christmas Tree lights in history. Prior to this, people would traditionally decorate their trees with wax candles.…
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Snow White Premieres
December 21, 1937 Walt Disney premiers the animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was the first full-length animated feature film taking 3 years and nearly $ 1.5 million to produce, a massive amount for a feature film in 1937. Walt Disney had to mortgage his house to help finance the film. The…
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Apple Announces Purchase of NeXT
December 20, 1996 In a surprise move at the time, Apple Computer Inc. announces their intention to purchase Steve Jobs’ company, NeXT, and bring Steve Jobs on board as an advisor to CEO Gil Amelio. The purchase was completed on February 4th of the next year and brought with it the core technology that formed…
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Perl is Always Appropriate
The O’Reilly book, Programming Perl, was released in 1991. It became known as the “Camel Book” among Perl programmers and the camel became the unofficial logo for the Perl programming language. December 18, 1987 Larry Wall releases version 1.0 of Perl, a general-purpose programming language very commonly used as a Unix scripting language. Perl became…
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Perl is Always Appropriate
The O’Reilly book, Programming Perl, was released in 1991. It became known as the “Camel Book” among Perl programmers and the camel became the unofficial logo for the Perl programming language. December 18, 1987 Larry Wall releases version 1.0 of Perl, a general-purpose programming language very commonly used as a Unix scripting language. Perl became…
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Canning Spam
December 16, 2003 The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is signed into United States law. Passed in an attempt to control the growing deluge of junk e-mail, the law’s effectiveness is dubious at best, especially considering political spam is exempt from the law. The post Canning Spam appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day…
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Canning Spam
December 16, 2003 The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is signed into United States law. Passed in an attempt to control the growing deluge of junk e-mail, the law’s effectiveness is dubious at best, especially considering political spam is exempt from the law. The post Canning Spam appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day…