Today in Tech History – November 18

 

1883 - US and Canadian railways adopted five standardized time zones to replace the multitude of local times scattered across North America. It was called “The Day Of Two Noons" as each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone.

1894 - The first Sunday Comic section is printed by the New York World.

1928 - Steamboat Willie premiered at Universal's Colony Theatre in New York City. It was the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub lwerks. It was also the first official appearance of Mickey Mouse. Happy birthday Mickey, now give us back a reasonable public domain date.

1963 - Telephones Get a Push
              Bell Telephone offers the first electronic push button telephones 2 customers in Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Dual-tone-multi frequency (DTMF) technology (Touch-Tone) was also introduced on the same de in order to accommodate the new push -button telephones.

1970 - Bill Gates Starts Programming
               Microsoft corp. co-founder and CEO Bill Gates get his start in computer programming at the Lakeside School in Seattle. The school owned some early computers and Gates and his friends spent nearly all their time pushing the machine to their limits. Time on Lakeside and other machines in the Seattle area was costly, however, show the newly formed Lakeside Programmers Group offered Information Sciences Inc. free programming services on its PDP-10 in return for free time on the computer. The group designed a payroll program for the company.

1977 - A startup called Microsoft, fresh off developing its own version of FORTRAN, won the right in arbitration to license its version of BASIC, previously licensed exclusively through MITS, makers of the Altair.

1985 – Calvin and Hobbes              

               91 years later, Bill Watterson syndicates a comic about a boy and his stuffed Tiger. Calvin and Hobbes will bring laughter to millions for the next 10 years. It reached through 2400 newspapers (at its height) and spun of 18 books. Bill Watterson ended the comic on December 31st, 1995 and has left it retired since.

2012 - The Nintendo Wii U launched in North America. The console did not yet featured it TVii service but did require of 5 GB download which took over an hour to update the console's software.

 

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