Today in Tech History – January 30

1925 – Douglas Engelbart Born

              Doug Engelbart, best known for inventing the mouse, is born. Engelbart publically demonstrated the mouse at a computer conference in 1968, where he also showed off work his group had done in hypermedia and on-screen video teleconferencing. The founder of the Bootstrap Institute, Engelbart has 20 patents to his name. Engelbart died in 2013.

1952 – Two New Primes Found with SWAC

             Using the Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC), researchers found two new prime numbers the first time they attempted a prime-searching program on the computer. Within the year, three other primes had been found. The National Bureau of Standards funded construction of the SWAC in Los Angeles in 1950 and it ran, in one form or another, until 1967.

                                                    

1975 – Hungarian Interior Design instructor Erno Rubik filed for a patent on his twisty toy cubes. The patent worked out for him. Erno Rubik became the first self-made millionaire from the Communist bloc.

1982 – First Computer Virus Written

             Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which are 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple II boot program called “Elk Cloner”.

                                                    

                                                    

2000 – First Super Bowl in HD

             Super Bowl XXXIV: The St. Louis Rams beat the Tennessee Titans, 23-16 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. This was the first Super Bowl to be broadcast in High Definition.

2007 – Microsoft released Windows Vista for home use. Thought not as many homes would end up using it as other versions of Windows.

                                                    

2013 – RIM announced it was changing its name to BlackBerry and also unveiled BlackBerry OS 10 and the new Z10 and Q10 smartphones.

 


If you like this post kindly comment below and do share your response. Thanks for reading.