Today in Tech History – December 24

1952 – William Ross Ashby wrote in his journal, “Following a suggestion form Dad I have decided to write an Introduction to Cybernetics.” The book was said to provide one of the most accessible ways to understand the work of researchers like Alan Turing. Ashby used the term “amplifying intelligence” in the book.

1955 – As NORAD tells the story, a misprinted phone number caused Continental Air Defense Command, CONAD to start getting calls from children for Santa Claus, so Director of Operation Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for signs of St. Nick. NORAD was created in 1958 and they’ve kept up the tracking tradition ever since.

1955 – The Associated Press syndicated a story that Santa Claus was being guaranteed safe passage into the United States. The story reported that, “CONAD, Army, Navy and Marine Air Forces will continue to track and guard Santa and his sleigh on his trip to and from the US.”

1968 – The Crew of Apollo 8 delivered a live televised Christmas Eve broadcast after becoming the first humans to orbit another space body.

1994 – GIF Madness!

             Seven years after introducing the GIF Format, during which it became a defacto standard because of its efficient compression algorithm, CompuServe reaches a licensing agreement with Unisys over the use of the patented LZW method in the GIF specification. CompuServe was not aware of the patent when it used the LZW technique in 1987 and Unisys was not aware that LZW was used in the GIF format until 1993. By the time the settlement was reached, the use of the GIF format had become widespread on the early World Wide Web. During the announcement of the licensing agreement with Compuserve, Unisys made it known that they expected all commercial services or software that used the GIF format or the LZW method to pay licensing fees. While the arrangement would likely not have affected anyone who used GIF graphics on their web sites, the announcement was generally met with outrage. Many people and organizations criticized Unisys for attempting to collect licensing fees on a format that was the “Burn All GIFs” campaign by the League for Programming Freedom. The uproar over the GIF licensing arrangement led to the development of the patent-free PNG format. The LZW patent expired worldwide during 2003 and 2004 so the GIF file format is now completely free to use.

1999 – The very seasonal HTML 4.01 was published by the World Wide Web consortium. HTML standard for well over a decade.

 2014 – Sony released its film “The Interview” online through Google and Microsoft as well as in limited theaters. The film’s release had been canceled after threats were issued and major theater chains decline to show it.

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