the Day in Tech History

1980 - The first Pac-Man machine was installed. Namco installed the first Pac-Man machine in a movie theater in Tokyo. Created by Toru Iwatani, the game has been one of the most popular in Arcades around the world.  Of course, Pac-Man was one of the most popular games in history and created many s...

1982 - Non-Linear Systems wasn't into building computers. However, they decided to get into the PC market with this portable machine. The Kaypro II was all metal with a 9" screen - So it was a good paperweight. It had predecessors, including, the Kaypro I...

1995 - Most people didn't even really know what the internet was at this point, but Chris Lamprecht did - And he got banned for life from using it. Funny thing is, he didn't do a crime on the internet. He sold stolen circuit boards belonging to Southwest Bell. He would be banned from the Internet un...

1983 - Microsoft releases the 2-button mouse. It was designed for Microsoft Word 1.0. The first mouse would fail, but the second version in 1985 would solidify the mouse on PC's. Of course, Microsoft launched Microsoft Word v. 1.0for $229.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 2...

1993 - You may see www, but it's true meaning is World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee wrote WorldWideWeb during the 1990, while working for CERN. He did it on a NeXT Computer and developed it for the NeXTSTep platform (which Apple bought and turned into Mac OS X). But it was today that was most momentous...

2003-Apple launches the iTunes Store. iTunes has been around since 2001, but without option to get new music. Before the iTunes store, users would have to burn from CD or copy previously made MP3 files. The store sold 1 million songs within a week...

1980 - Activision was technically founded in 1979, but it wasn't until April 25 that the "Fantastic Four" joined up as the first third-party software company for video games. David Crane and Alan Miller left Atari August 1979 to start programming under the Activision name. Larry Kaplan and Bob Whit...

2000- Before smartphones, Personal Digital Assistants were the device to have. You could store contacts, write memos, set up, read and send email and even play a nice game of Solitaire, or the game where you eliminated color marbles. I - in my IT career - not only had a Palm III, but also ran with...

2000 - Five arial images of Area 51 are leaked onto Terraserver from a Russian satellite called "Sovinformsputnik. The amount of traffic that went to the site brought the server down, so they had to take the photos off until they could handle the traffic...

1956 - An Wang patented Ferrite Core Memory on May 17, 1955. However, IBM used Ferrite cores in their systems and the patent issue started an interesting legal battle. One that ended in IBM purchasing the patent outright for "Several million dollars". Wang took the funds to build up Wang Labratories...