Today in Tech History – January 28

1878 – The first commercial telephone exchange in the US was installed at New Haven, Connecticut, and served 21 subscribers connected by a single strand of iron wire. Only two conversations could be handled simultaneously and six connections had to be made for each call.

1952 – Bank of America and SRI Sign a Contract to Develop ERMA’s Pilot Model

             Bank of America and SRI signed a contract for phase 3of the proposal covering the development, construction and testing of pilot model ERMA to provide service to 12 branches, ERMA was a computer-based system to process the increasing number of checks in circulation after World War II. The contract specified that Bank of America would pay SRI no more than $850,000 over four years, with an additional $25,000 for subcontracts. Although the final expenses were never released, most engineers estimate that the grand total was actually around $10 million.

1960 – The Communications Moon Relay System was inaugurated publicly when a facsimile picture of the USS Hancock was transmitted wirelessly by radio wave to Washington DC, by being bounced off the moon.

1984 – Tim McVey Day

             One billion points on one quarter. That was the reason for Tim McVey Day. At the Twin Galaxies arcade back on January 17^th, Tim scored 1,000,042,270 points on one quarter to the game “Nibbler” – a hybrid Pac-Man and Centipede game. McVey got his name in Computer Games Magazine for it, and so he became the first video gamer to get a civic day in his honor.

His record was broken eight months later by Enricho Zanetti.

Of course, this event gets overshadowed by the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh.

1986 – The Space Shuttle Challenger experienced on O-ring failure in the right solid rocket booster during flight. 73 seconds after liftoff a catastrophic explosion claimed crew and vehicle.

1998 – Radio Shack Chooses Compaq

             Radio Shack partners exclusively with Compaq rather than IBM to sell PCs throughout their 7,000 stores. Six years later, IBM sold its PC division to the Chinese company Lenovo. Compaq was the exclusive PC sold in Radio Shack stores for many years.

1999 – Yahoo! Buys GeoCities

             Yahoo! Buys GeoCities for $3.65 billion USD. GeoCities was an early web hosting service getting its start in 1994. As a testament to its popularity, there were at least 38 million pages remaining on GeoCities when Yahoo! Shut it down in 2009.

2001 – The Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants faced off in Tampa Bay, Florida for Super Bowl XXXV, and facial-recognition surveillance cameras pointed at tens of thousands of fans entering the game. It found 12 false positives.  

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