Today in Tech History – February 4, 2018

1890 – Thomas Edison received a patent for the first quadruplex telegraph, which could send two messages simultaneously in each direction. One message consisted of an electric signal of varying strength, while the second was a signal of varying polarity.

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Quadruplex_Telegraph
http://www.google.com/patents?id=SV9BAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

1998 – Noël Godin, a Belgian who made a practice of pie-ing rich and famous people struck a pie against the face of Bill Gates. Gates did not press charges.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-207832.html

2004 – Mark Zuckerberg and a few other guys at Harvard launched TheFacebook so Harvard students can look up and hook up with each other. They would eventually expand the service to the world. And drop the “the”.

https://www.facebook.com/facebook?v=info

2014 – Microsoft named 22-year employee Satya Nadella its new CEO replacing Steve Ballmer. Bill Gates stepped down as Chairman of the Board at the same time and was replaced by John Thompson.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/feb14/02-04newspr.aspx

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.