Today in Tech History – August 14

1888 – Mr. George Gouraud introduced the Edison phonograph to London in a press conference, including the playing of a piano and cornet recording of Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord,” one of the first recordings of music ever made.

1894 – The first wireless transmission of information using Morse code was demonstrated by Oliver Lodge during a meeting of the British Association at Oxford. A message was transmitted about 50 meters from the old Clarendon Laboratory to the lecture theater of the University Museum.

1940 – Atanasoff Finishes Paper Describing the Atanasoff Berry Computer
          John Atanasoff finishes a paper describing the Atanasoff Berry Computer, or ABC, the computer he designed with Clifford Berry to solve simultaneous linear equations. Atanasoff was only able to claim credit for this paper and title of inventor of the electronic digital computer after a long court battle that ended in 1972. The case – initiated on charge by Honeywell Inc. that Sperry Rand. Corp. had enforced a fraudulent patent – involved lengthy testimonial by Atanasoff and ENIAC inventors Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who held the patent under review. A judge’s ruling that Atanasoff was the true inventor led to invalidation of the ENIAC patent.
A working replica of the original ABC was completed in 1998 by staff and volunteers at Iowa State University at Ames.
Atanasoff died on June 15, 1995.

1989 – Sega launched the Genesis console in the US. It had been released in Japan the previous October as the ‘Mega Drive.’

2006 – Dell Laptops Catch Fire
          Dell and Sony admit that flaws in Sony-manufactured batteries used in certain laptops could result in the batteries overheating, catching fire, or exploding. They recall over 4.1 million batteries, the largest computer-related recall in history. This came after several widely publicized reports in the preceding months where Dell laptops did catch fire. Still to this day, Dell’s reputation has never fully recovered from the incident. 

2008 – Netflix goes Offline
          Fifty-Five Netflix distribution centers go offline due to an “undisclosed error”. While they didn’t let us know what happened, they did say that it only affected the core of mail-based delivery operations. The problem took 3 days to fully resolve, although they were slowly shipping movies by that Wednesday.

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