Search Results for "october 17"

1969 – The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired on the BBC. The show created the Spam sketch that would eventually inspire the slang term for unsolicited email.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8287931.stm

1991 – Linux Kernel version 0.02 was released, attracting a lot of attention. Author Linus Torvalds felt this version was at least usable and worth a wider release.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/comp.os.minix/4995SivOl9o/GwqLJlPSlCEJ%5B1-25%5D

1992 – IBM announced the ThinkPad line of Notebook computers at offices in New York City.

http://www.zdnet.com/happy-20th-birthday-to-the-ibm-thinkpad-a-design-classic-7000002561/

2002 – “Xbox Media Player” and its first beta source code was released. The code was a result of Frodo, the founder of “YAMP” (Yet Another Media Player), joining the Xbox Media Player team. The project was later changed to Xbox Media Center and then just XBMC.

http://xbmc.org/10-years-of-xbmc/

2011 – Steve Jobs died at his home surrounded by family. The co-founder and CEO of Apple had fought pancreatic cancer for years.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-dies-apple-chief-innovated-personal-computer/story?id=14383813#.UDY7lt1lRG0

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1957 -The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, becoming the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, and motivating the US to get into gear and heat up the space race.
http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/

1985 – Richard Stallman started a non-profit corporation called the Free Software Foundation, dedicated to promoting the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software. The FSF among other things, enforces the copyleft requirements of the GNU General Public License often referred to as the GPL.
http://www.linkedin.com/company/free-software-foundation

2004 – SpaceShipOne returned from its third journey, a reusable spacecraft that could carry passengers beyond the earth’s atmosphere. It won the $10 million Ansari X prize for private spaceflight.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2010/10/october-4-2004-spaceshipone-wins-10-million-x-prize/

2016 – Google announced two phones, the Pixel and Pixel XL, the first phones designed from the ground up by Google. The company also introduced a Google Home voice-activated assistant along with several other products.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37551413

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1942 – Germany conducted the first successful test of the V-2/A4 rocket, launched from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde. It traveled 118 miles.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-conducts-first-successful-v-2-rocket-test

1950 – John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley received US patents for circuits that would eventually be called the transistor.

https://www.google.com/patents/US2524035?dq=2,524,035&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_bwVVJGDOorioAS14IHwBg&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA

1967 – Air Force Major William “Pete” Knight flew the rocket-powered X-15 aircraft to 4,520 mph, Mach 6.72. That is the fastest manned aircraft ever flown.

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/x-15-walkaround-22512890/

1972 – The first USA/Japan Computer Conference was held in Tokyo.

http://books.google.com/books/about/First_USA_Japan_Computer_Conference_proc.html?id=eY4mAAAAMAAJ

1985 – STS-51J lifted off Sending the Space Shuttle Atlantis on its maiden flight. It was the fourth shuttle created and eventually became the last shuttle to fly in July 2011.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-51J.html

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1925 – John Logie Baird performed the first test of a working television system. It delivered a grayscale 30-line vertically scanned image, at five frames per second. After a ventriloquist’s dummy appeared on screen, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton became the first person televised in full tonal range.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/research/general/tvstory2 http://www.solarnavigator.net/inventors/john_logie_baird.htm

1955 – ENIAC was shut down for the last time. After 11 years running at 5,000 operations a second and taking up 1,000 square feet of floor space, it had earned its retirement.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/October/2/

1996 – US President Bill Clinton signed amendments to the Freedom of Information Act requiring the US government to make electronic documents available online.

http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia_updates/Vol_XVII_4/page2.htm

2015 – Google officially reorganized, merging with a new parent company called Alphabet. Subsidiaries included Google, Google Fiber, Calico and Life Sciences, Google Ventures and Google Capital, Nest, and Google X. Sundar Pichai was named CEO of Google while Larry Page became CEO of Alphabet and Sergey Brin became President of Alphabet.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000119312515336577/0001193125-15-336577-index.htm

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1958 – The National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics was officially absorbed by the brand new National Aeronautics and Space Agency. Another expanded government bureaucracy that was only good for putting people on the moon.

http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/nasa.html

1971 – The first clinical human CT scan was performed on a middle aged lady with a suspected frontal lobe tumor, at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital in South London.
http://bjr.birjournals.org/content/79/937/5.full.pdf

http://www.impactscan.org/CThistory.htm

1982 – Sony started selling the first CD players to the public, the CDP-101 for 168,000 yen (that’s about $730 US). At the time you could get Billy Joel’s album 52nd street on CD– and soon many more.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/SonyHistory/2-09.html

2003 – 4Chan launched its main page, intended as a sister-site to the Japanese 2Chan for discussions of manga and anime. They provided the fertile ground for the growth of lolcats, Rickrolling, Anonymous, Pedobear and more.

http://www.4chan.org/news?all#2

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1793 – Eli Whitney applied to patent his improved cotton gin, capable of cleaning 50 pounds of lint per day, and powering patent metaphors and arguments for centuries to come.

http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=1028

1955 – A pair of proud Seattle parents welcomed their new son into the world, having no idea he would become one of the most loved and hated men of all time. Happy birthday William Henry Gates the third. You know him as Bill.

http://www.biography.com/people/bill-gates-9307520

1998 – President Bill Clinton signed into law the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, making it illegal for you to use computers the way they were designed to be used, if big companies didn’t want you to.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/dmca-ten-years-unintended-consequences

2014 – The W3C published its recommendation of HTML5, the final version of the standard. It included the video and canvas tags among other improvements.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.