Today in Tech History – September 27

1922 – Scientists at the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory near Washington, DC, demonstrated radar by showing that if a ship passed through a radio wave broadcast between two stations, that ship could be detected.

1983 – Richard Stallman Announces the GNU Project

Promising a “Free Unix”, Richard Stallman announces that he is going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system he calls GNU (which stands for Gnu’s Not Unix). This is a significant milestone in the history of open source and free software. Stallman would later found the Free Software Foundation.

1996 – Hacker Mitnick Indicated on Charge

Kevin Mitnick, 33, was indicated on charge resulting from a 2 ½- year hacking spree. Police accused the hacker, who called himself “Condor,” of stealing software worth millions of dollars from major computer corporations. The maximum possible sentence for his crimes was 200 years.

1998 – Google’s Fake Birthday

For some peculiar reason, Google has at times chosen the date of September 27^th as their birthday, even though it is more officially September 4^th or 7^th. Google has no explanation for celebrating their birthday on different days over the years other than to say:

“Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate out birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake.”