-
Segway Unveiled
December 3, 2001 Inventor Dean Kamen unveils the Segway self-balancing, battery-powered vehicle on the TV show Good Morning America. The Segway uses computers and motors in its base to keep itself upright while the user is riding it. Users shift their weight to control the Segway. While not considered a commercial success, the Segway has…
-
Apple Releases QuickTime
December 2, 1991 Apple releases version 1.0 of QuickTime, a multimedia extension for playing color video, transforming the capabilities of personal computers. Before QuickTime, only specialized computers could play color video. QuickTime allowed anyone with a personal computer to do so and it changed the history of computing – in more ways than one. It…
-
Business.com is Big Business
November 1, 1999 The domain name business.com sells for $ 7.5 million. At the time, it was the most expensive domain name sold in history and still ranks in the top 10 all-time most expensive domain names. The post Business.com is Big Business appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day in Tech…
-
Atari Introduces Pong
November 29, 1972 Atari introduces their first product, Pong, which would become the world’s first commercially successful video game. The popularity of Pong sparked the beginning of the video game industry with Atari being the leader in both arcade and home video gaming industries through the early 1980’s. The post Atari Introduces Pong appeared first…
-
Polaroid Instant Camera Goes on Sale
November 28, 1948 Just in time for the Christmas shopping season, 57 units of the first commercial instant camera, the Polaroid Land Camera Model 95, go on sale at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston. Producing sepia toned photographs in about one minute, the Model 95 became a hit almost as quickly. Polaroid believed that 57 units would be…
-
Microsoft Ships Internet Explorer 2.0
November 27, 1995 Nearly 6 months to the day after Bill Gates sent his Internet Tidal Wave memo recognizing the importance of the Internet, and only 3 months after releasing version 1.0, Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 2.0 for Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5. IE 2.0 was still based on licensed code from Spyglass Mosaic, but was the…
-
MP3 Patented in US
There is no official logo for MPEG Audio Layer III, otherwise known as MP3 November 26, 1996 United States Patent 5,579,430 is granted to the Fraunhofer Institut in Germany for a “digital encoding process”, the technology used in MEPG Audio Layer III, more commonly known as MP3. MP3 technology paved the way for the digital music…
-
Roxio Acquires Napster Legacy
November 25, 2002 Digital media software company Roxio purchases the assets of the former Napster, including name, logo, domain name, technology portfolio, and other intellectual property. Napster was the peer-to-peer file sharing service that changed the music industry forever, facilitating the easy sharing of music, much to the chagrin of the established music industry. The…
-
Computer Mouse Patented
November 17, 1970 Douglas Engelbart receives US patent 3,541,541 for his “X-Y Position Indicator For A Display System”, more commonly known as the computer mouse. Engelbart called his device a “mouse” because the cord looked like a tail. The mouse was first prototyped in 1964, but wasn’t demoed until 1968, and was not included with a commercial…