1897 – 23-year-old Guglielmo Marconi received a patent in England for his wireless telegraphy which we now call radio. The Wireless Telegraphy and Signal Co. Ltd. was formed a few weeks later.
1928 – W3XK, owned by the Jenkins Television Corporation, went on the air becoming the first television broadcasting station in the US.
1953 – IBM Announces the Model 650 Computer
IBM announced its 650 series of computers, the first mass-produced computer, and the dominant computer of the decade. The IBM 650 stored information on a rotating magnetic drum and received it on programmed punch cards. Its memory stored numbers with up to 10 decimal digits.
2001 – Napster Shut Down
Napster, the file sharing service (started by John & Shawn Fanning, and Sean Parker) that was up since 1999, had a series of trials and tribulations until 2001. After lengthy legal battles with artists like Madonna and Metallica, Napster began to realize their business model is not going to work. They shut down the entire network to comply with an injunction.
This case was partially settled on September 24, 2001, where Napster was ordered to pay $26 million in damages and $10 million in future royalties. Eventually, Napster filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, right before Napster 3.0 was ready to be deployed. On May 17, 2002, German company Bertelsmann purchased for $85 million, however, it was blocked on September 3.
Ultimately, Roxio purchased the company and re-branded it. They owned it until 2008 when Best BUY would purchase Napster for $121 million. They owned until December 1, 2011 when Rhapsody purchased the service.
Napster was named after a hairstyle.
2001 – Bram Cohen first revealed Bit Torrent on a Yahoo group called decentralization.
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