Today in Tech History – April 25

1944 – Lt. Carter Harman of the 1^st Air Commando Group rescued four men from the jungle in Burma, Flying a Sikorsky YR-4 helicopter. It was the first combat rescue by helicopters in the US Army Air Forces.

1953 – Watson and Crick presented their finding on the double helical structure of DNA in the publication Nature. They noted that the structure “suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” 50 Yeats later the Human Genome Project had concluded sequencing the genome and published a follow-on in Nature on their vision for genetic research.

1961 – Noyce Awarded Patent for “Integrated Circuit”
             Robert Noyce received the US patent for the silicon-based integrated circuit. He went on to found the Intel Corporation with Gordon E Moore in 1968. Noyce fought a long patent rights battle with Jack Kilby who invented a germanium based integrated circuit.

1980 – Activision Formed
            Activision was technically founded in 1979, but it wasn’t until April 25 that the “Fantastic Four” joined up as the first third-party software company for video games. David Crane and Alan Miller left Atari August 1979 to start programming under the Activision name. Larry Kaplan and Bob Whitehead stayed behind until April 25^th when Activision came out. Richard Muchmore was the venture capitalist and Jim Levy rounded the group as Activision CEO.

1990 – Hubble Deployed
            The crew of the Space shuttle Discovery deploys the US$2.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope. There will be initial difficulties caused by a flaw in the design of the telescopes mirror. Image correction software will keep the telescope useful until corrective optics are installed on December 25, 1993.    

 
1996 – Yahoo! Begins advertising its web-based search service on national television, featuring the tag line “DO You Yahoo?”. The ads first air during Late Night with David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, and Star Trek. This was very early example of the Internet entering into the mainstream.

2014 – Microsoft completed its acquisition of Nokia’s handset business. Nokia retained its mapping, research and network infrastructure business. Microsoft gained most of the mobile phone parts of the company.

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