Today in Tech History – April 16

1959 – “LISP” Language Unveiled

             The programming language that provided the basic for work in artificial intelligence, LISP, has its first public presentation. Created by John McCarthy, LISP offers programmers flexibility in organization and it or its descendants are still used in the AI development environment.

1971 – Abhay Bhusan proposed FTP (File Transfer Protocol) in RFC 114.

1976 – The Helios-B deep-space probe made what was then the closest controlled approach to the Sun at 43 million km or within 0.3 AU.

1977 – Debut of Apple II, Commodore Pet

             Apple Computer shows off the Apple II home computer at the West Coast Computer Faire. The $1,298 Home machine featured a 6502 processor, 4kb RAM 16kb ROM and for the first time – A home computer with color graphics. Apple II was the most recognizable home and school computers in the 80s and 90s. I personally would play Ultima III and Ultima IV on an Apple II after school. The final Apple II rolled off the line on October 15, 1993.

Commodore also unveiled the PET 2001, which is a full-featured computer. It also had the 6502 processor, 4kb RAM, 14kb ROM and a cassette drive for $595. The Pet was replaced by the PET 2001-N in 1979.

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