Today in Tech History – November 16

1904 – Sir John Ambrose Fleming went “scudding down Gower Street” in London on his way to patenting the “oscillation valve” which we fondly call the Vacuum Tube. His patent was later invalidated by the US Supreme Court, but that didn’t stop Fleming from being Knighted and receiving a medal of honor from the Institute of Radio Engineers.

1922 – IBM System 360 Designer Amdahl Born

             IBM System/360 hardware designer Gene Amdahl is born in Flandreau, South Dakota. The System/360 marked IBM’s transition from discrete transistors to integrated circuits, as well as its move to a focus on electronic computer systems rather than punch card equipment. Amdahl went on from IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Computer Corp., which was very successful in making the first IBM-compatible mainframe systems.

1965 – The Soviet Union launched the Venera 3 space probe towards Venus. It would become the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet, though it failed to return data.

1977 – Close Encounters of the 3^rd Kind Debuts

              Most of the time, we skip over movie releases, unless it has had a definite impact on the Tech and geek community. That is the case with this movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind – Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Richard Dreyfuss, and Teri Garr was released to 272 US theaters. It was produced on a budget of US$20 million amd would gross US $5,379,460 in the opening weekend. It also changed the way I ate mashed potatoes.

1982 – Steve Jobs Writes a Letter

             Steve Jobs writes a letter to McIntosh Labs asking for rights to use “Macintosh” as the brand name of Apple’s still-in-development computer. McIntosh Labs makes high-end stereo equipment, and while Jef Raskin, creator of the Macintosh project, intentionally spelled the name with a letter “a" to differentiate Apple’s computer from McIntosh’s audio products, Apple was denied a trademark because the name was phonetically identical. Since the Macintosh team had become attached to the name, Steve Jobs wrote the letter hoping to get permission or a licensing arrangement. Gordon Gow, president of McIntosh Labs visited Apple headquarters for a product demonstration after receiving the letter. However, McIntosh lawyers advised Gow to reject the request. It wasn’t until March of 1983 that Apple secured a license for the name Macintosh. In 1986 Apple wholly acquired the trademark for an undisclosed “substantial” amount of money.

2000 – ICANN announced its decision to include 7 new top-level domains giving birth to the .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name and .pro, TLDs.  

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