Today in Tech History – February 27

1891 – David Sarnoff was born near Minsk. He would go on to befriend Marconi and rise to the Presidency of RCA and be integral in founding NBC.

1932 – English physicist James Chadwick published a letter on the existence of the neutron, some say giving birth to modern nuclear physics.

1976 – National Security Agency’s Harvest Computer Retires

             The IBM 7950, a supercomputer also known as the Harvest System, ceased operating after 14 years serving the National Security Agency. The Harvest was a one-of-a-kind adjunct to the Stretch computer and was delivered in 1962. It was designed for cryptanalysis by James H. Pomerene. Its electronics, built from the same kind of discrete transistors used for Stretch, were about twice as big (physically) as the Stretch Harvest added a small number of instructions to the Stretch, was attached to it and could not operate independently.

1986 – The United States Senate voted to allow its debates to be televised on a trial basis. The trial was successful.

1998 – Apple Discontinues Newton

             After Steve Jobs takes the role of Acting CEO (After the firing of Gil Amelio) he decided to trim some of the product fat. In result, the Apple Newton – it’s attempt at a PDA – was officially discontinued after 5 years. But no all was lost off this, for the mobile applications got shifted into their other Mac OS technologies. Cyberdog and OpenDOC were two other Apple programs that were discontinued after Jobs took the helm again. 

2001 – V.92 Introduced

             US Robotics introduces the V.92 modem standard. Given that broadband Internet had begun to take significant hold and that supporting V.92 required ISPs to upgrade their infrastructure, V.92 never really made much of an impact in the marketplace.

2007 – CompUSA Restructures

              CompUSA announces that it will close 126 retail stores by June and restructure its remaining 103 stores. Eventually those 103 stores also close. Once a major player in the computer retails sales market, CompUSA was eventually purchased by Systemax. Systemax now runs 35 stores bearing the CompUSA name.

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