Learn an interesting fact to share with friends and increase your Geek Cred!
In 2007, the original iPhone was released. The iPhone featured a touchscreen, virtual keyboard, 2-megapixel camera and 8 GB of storage and sold for $599 with a 2-year contract with Cingular (now AT&T). Apple sold a mind-boggling 700,000 iPhones on its release weekend. Learn more […]
In 1983, NASA launched the Galaxy 1 satellite. The Galaxy 1 was used for general communications services, such as television relay, voice and data. It was dedicated to cable television transmission across the US. Learn more at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1983-065A
In 1929, the first mechanically scanned color television was demonstrated by Bell Laboratories in New York City. It consisted of three complete systems of photoelectric cells, amplifiers, glow-tubes, and color filters, with a series of mirrors to superimpose the red, green, and blue images into
In 1974, the first UPC bar code reader was used. At a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, a laser beam in an NCR checkout terminal with a bar code reader read the UPC bar code symbol on a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum and automatically
In 1974 , Texas Instruments was awarded a patent for the TI-2500 DataMath microcalculator which it applied for in 1967. The inventors were James H. Van Tassel, Jerry D. Merryman, and Jack St. Clair Kilby. The TI-2500 Datamath was the first calculator sold by Texas Instruments.
In 1963, the first demonstration of a home video recorder took place at BBC Studios, London. While it was arguably a revolutionary development in home entertainment, machines were expensive and could not meet the needs brought on by the onset of color programming. Learn more
In 1912, Alan Turing, a pioneer in computer theory, was born. Alan Turing is best known for the Turing machine, a theoretical computing machine that could serve as an idealized model for mathematical calculation. Learn more at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TuringMachine.html
In 1978, Pluto’s moon, Charon, was discovered by James Christy. Charon is almost half the size of Pluto. The little moon is so big that Pluto and Charon are sometimes referred to as a double dwarf planet system. Learn more at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Plu_Charon
In 1948, the first stored computer program was run, on Manchester Mark I. The program was to determine the highest factor of a number. The number chosen was quite small, but within days they had built up to trying the program on 218, and the
In 2011, ICANN granted private companies the right to create new website domain suffixes. Last week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) released 1,930 proposed suffixes. A 60-day comment period is underway. Final decisions will be made based on the comment period
In 1931, the first photoelectric cell commercial installation occurred. The swinging doors between the kitchen and dining room of Wilcox’s Pier Restaurant in West Haven, Connecticut were operated by a photoelectric cell. Learn more at http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-photoelectric-cells-work.html In 1963, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman
In 1983, aboard Challenger 2, Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman in space. The first woman in space was Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who orbited the Earth 48 times in 1963. Learn more about Sally Ride at http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ride-sk.html
In 1988, Microsoft released MS-DOS 4.0. MS-DOS 4.0 provided XMS support, support for partitions on hard disks up to 2 GB and a graphical shell. Compatability issues and bugs were addressed in MS-DOS 4.01 later that year. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
In 1911, Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation, the precursor to IBM, was incorporated. It was a merger of three companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company and the Computing Scale Corporation. CTR became IBM in 1924. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM
