1906 – The Wright Patent
Orville and Wilbur Wright are granted the first airplane patent in the U.S. for their “new and useful improvement in Flying Machines.”(US No. 821,393).
1973 – Xerox Researchers Proposes “Ethernet”
Robert Metcalfe writes a thirteen-page memo describing a new type of data transmission method. His memo was entitled “Ether Acquisition”, which would connect Hawaii’s ALOHA Network. Alto Ethernet was born on paper, but didn’t see operation until November 11, 1973 when it was implemented. Metcalfe was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1996 for his work on inventing Ethernet. He was also inducted into the National Inventor Hall of Fame in 2007. Robert Metcalfe describes a new device called the Laser Printer Adobe ships Illustrator 7.0 Apple splits.
1980 – Happy Birthday, Pac-Man!
Namco’s upcoming game “Puck-Man” is location tested in a movie theater complex in Japan. After favorable initial testing, the game slightly tweaked, with the most major change the renaming of the game to “Pac-Man”. Midway, Namco’s U.S. distributor, thought that vandals would alter the letter “P” to an “F”. While the game was not officially released until later the year (October 10th in the US), the creators of the game consider May 22 to Pac-Man’s birthday because it was the first time the game was shown to the general public.
One of the little known facts about Pac-Man is that it was specifically developed to be popular with women. Most video games of that time had a war or sports theme to them and women were generally not interested in those games. Pac-Man would be the first game popular with both men and women and was the first video game to become a social phenomenon. Pac-Man generated over $2.5 billion by the 1990’s, becoming one of the highest grossing video games of all time.
Namco’s upcoming game “Puck-Man” is location tested in a movie theater complex in Japan. After favorable initial testing, the game slightly tweaked, with the most major change the renaming of the game to “Pac-Man”. Midway, Namco’s U.S. distributor, thought that vandals would alter the letter “P” to an “F”. While the game was not officially released until later the year (October 10th in the US), the creators of the game consider May 22 to Pac-Man’s birthday because it was the first time the game was shown to the general public.
One of the little known facts about Pac-Man is that it was specifically developed to be popular with women. Most video games of that time had a war or sports theme to them and women were generally not interested in those games. Pac-Man would be the first game popular with both men and women and was the first video game to become a social phenomenon. Pac-Man generated over $2.5 billion by the 1990’s, becoming one of the highest grossing video games of all time.
1990 – Microsoft released Windows 3.0. It featured big improvements in interface and multitasking. It’s Control Panel feature caught the eye of Apple which sued, and lost.
Comments
Post a Comment