Today in Tech History – November 20

1955 – Lotus Notes Inventor Ozzie Born

              Ray Ozzie, who designed the Lotus Notes office management software for Lotus Development Corporation, is born in Chicago, IL. Ozzie graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1979. During this time Ray worked at the Computer-based Education Research Lab (CERL) on the Plato operating system. He was impressed with PLATO’s real-time communication and has often publicly credited his CERL experience as the inspiration for Lotus Notes. In 1984 Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, supported the idea to develop a PLATO-like product for PC by funding Iris Associates, Inc. In August 1986 Lotus Notes was complete, and was an early example of commercially successful groupware.

1963 – O|| 7|-|$ d4’/, 7|-|3 //OrD “|-|4><Or1||9* //4$ U$3D 1|| 4||1$$U3 OPh “7|-|3 73(|-|”, //|-|1 (|-| 1$ 4 //4$$4 (|-|U$377$ 1||$717U73 OPh 73(|-|||OL9’/||3//$P4P3r. What, you can’t read that? Oh. Ok.

On this day, the word “hacking” was used in an issue of “the tech”, which is a Massachusetts institute of technology newspaper.

Here is a snippet of the article:

“Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system...

Basically, hackers were tying up phone lines between Harvard and MIT.

1984 – The SETI Institute, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence was founded by Thomas Pierson (CEO), and Dr. Jill Tarter. No luck so far, but they keep looking.

1985 – Windows 1.0 Ships

             Two years after initially being announced, Microsoft finally ships the first version of Windows. Originally slated to be shipped in April of 1984, the long delay caused skeptics to began to accuse Windows of being “vaporware”. Due to the relatively high demands of then-current PC technology, Windows 1.0 was generally considered too slow to be usable. It wasn’t until Windows 3 that the operating system began to generate significant sales.

1998 – The first module of the International Space Station launched. Zarya, also called the Functional Cargo Block, provided electrical power, storage and propulsion. It’s now consigned to being used for storage.

2013 – AOL Tries to Shut Down WinAmp

               AOL shocked a lot of geeks when they announced WinAmp.com would be shutting down and the software would be no longer available come December 20^th. The next day rumors surfaced that Microsoft was planning to buy it – which didn’t go further than the initial report. The service did not shut down though.

On January 14^th, 2014 it was announced a Belgian radio website called “Radionomy” had purchased the Nullsoft brand, including WinAmp and Shoutcast.    

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