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Today in Tech History – July 16




1945 – The United States detonated a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico. The Trinity test ushered in the atomic age.

 

1951 – VisiCalc Creator Born

            VisiCalc creator Dan Bricklin was born in Philadelphia. Bricklin moved from hometown to Boston to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and study computer science.

The background proved useful during a later turn at Harvard Business School, where Bricklin teamed with Robert Frankston to design the first business spreadsheet program. The result, in 1979, was a visible calculator that automated the recalculation of spreadsheets.

Bricklin and Frankston founded Software Arts Inc. and sold their program to Apple Computer and other companies, selling 100,000 copies in the first year.

 

1969 – Apollo 11 Heads for the Moon

             Apollo 11 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on the way to becoming the first space mission to land men on the Moon.

 

1995 – Amazon Goes Online

            That was the first book Amazon sold on July 16th, 1995. The company ran from their garage in Bellevue, Washington. 3 SPARC machines was all they had and a cool little mechanism that runs a bell every time a book was sold. The business model was set to make profit in 5 years. It was a good thing, because that may have helped it survive the dot com bubble. 17 years later, Amazon is going strong. Purchases of companies like WOOT! And Zappos!, along with the introduction of Kindle e-reader and Amazon Prime, the company is one of the largest resellers of product on the web.

 


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