In 1962 – NASA “Relay 1” launched, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.
In 1977 – Young Bill Gates was arrested for traffic violation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, leading to one of the most famous mugshots ever.
In 1977 – Robert Metcalfe et. al were awarded a patent for “Multipoint data communication system with collision detection” also known as ethernet.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
In 1896 – Guglielmo Marconi amazed a group at Toynbee Hall in East London with a demonstration of wireless communication across a room. Every time Marconi hit a key a bell would ring from a box across the room being carried by William Henry Preece.
In 1973 – Founder of LinkExchange, CEO of Zappos, and promoter of customer-centric business, Tony Hsieh was born.
In 1980 – Apple’s stock was initially offered for sale. Regulators in Massachusetts prohibited individual investors in the state from buying the stock, as it was deemed too risky.
In 1991 – Paul Kunz set up the first website in North America. It searched particle physics literature at Stanford.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
My first new show of 2014 has a name. And it is Current Geek.
In 2009 Scott Johnson and I, looking for an excuse to podcast together started a three times a week show talking about stuff that geeks liked but wasn’t tech so it wouldn’t conflict with my day job at CNET. Then while looking for an excuse to do a show on TWiT, we started doing a version called Current Geek Weekly, still with the same restriction. When I left CNET in 2010 we kept doing Current Geek Weekly and the original Current Geek for awhile. Eventually though the Weekly faded out, and the original was folded into The Morning Stream. Finally, even that last version was replaced by Tom’s Tasty Tech Time.
The problem with Current Geek was that restriction. That problem is gone.
So I’m VERY happy to let you know that our new weekly show on Frogpants will be called Current Geek. Scott and I have yet to nail down the exact format, but our goal is cover all the things the Frogpants crowd cares about, including gadgets, tech, movies, comics, TV shows, books and more. Each week we’ll be joined by different folks from around the Frogpants network and beyond.
More details and launch dates to come as we try to figure out how to make it all work?
Like to help?
We could do a kickstarter to help get the show off the ground. There’s nothing wrong with that. We could have just taken donations. But Scott and David had a grand idea. What if people had a way to help fund the show but they got something out of it, and they didn’t have to wait 30 days in the bargain.
Presenting the Frogpants store Current Geek show pack You can get prints, posters or the Tech History wall calendar and help kick us until we get the show started. Which will be soon.
So go do that if you can. If not, we’re still making the show, so don’t fret. We got you.
In 1815 – Ada Byron was born in London, England to the poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. She would later marry William King and take on his title as Lady Lovelace. But she is best remembered as Charles Babbage’s friend, and writer of the first program for his Difference Engine. She is considered by many to be the first computer programmer.
In 1942 – Germany conducted the first powered test flight of a V-1 Rocket, launched from beneath an Fw-200.
In 1944 – Paul Otlet died. His theories presciently described a global interlinked “web” of documents, presaging the World Wide Web almost 50 years before its invention.
In 1993 – John Carmack and friends at iD Software released the video game Doom. It would launch a million mods and make the first person shooter the dominant form of video game for decades.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
In 1906 – Grace Hopper was born. She would rise to the rank of Rear Admiral but be best remembered for popularizing the term “debugging” for hunting down computer errors. She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL.
In 1968 – Computer scientist Douglas Engelbart gave a legendary product demonstration of NLS that would become known as “the mother of all demos.” Among other things it introduced the computer mouse, video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, bootstrapping, and a collaborative real-time editor.
In 1987 – Microsoft released Windows 2.0 which among other improvements could run the first Windows versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
In 1931 – U.S. Patent No. 1,835,031 for a “concentric conducting system” was awarded to Lloyd Espenschied of Kew Gardens, New York, and Herman A. Affel of Ridgewood, New Jersey, and assigned to the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Coaxial Cable had been patented.
In 1993 – The U.S. secretary of defense declared the GPS system a dual use system that had Initial Operation Capability and opened the Standard Positioning System to civilians, which gave accuracy of nine meters horizontally.
In 2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX became the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
As of December 31 I will no longer be an employee of TWiT. Leo decided that he needs “an in-studio anchor for Tech News Today, and a News Director who can help us build the kind of organization you can count on for authoritative tech news and information.”
Mike Elgan has been hired to become the lead anchor of Tech News Today and TWiT’s first official News Director. It’s a great call. Mike’s a smart guy. I congratulate him and wish him the best of luck.
You can read more about it at inside.twit.tv.
I agreed, as did Leo and Lisa, not to say much more about it to try to avoid a “he said she said” situation. That’s not helpful for anyone.
To clarify a couple questions:
I found out Tuesday and agreed to keep it confidential until Thursday.
Thursday evening Leo very kindly changed his mind about Frame Rate but I politely declined.
Now for more positive news!
I spent all day Friday on the phone and while I have nothing nailed down quite yet, some good stuff is brewing.
I’m also gobsmacked by the outpouring of affection on Twitter and in the chat room. I cannot thank the audience enough. TNT has the smartest audience in the world and now I can say quite truthfully the most supportive too. Thank you.
I’ll be doing a Google Hangout on Monday evening to brainstorm ideas with anybody who’s interested. Look for details here and on Twitter.
Onward!
Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;
He’ll shape his old course in a country new.
In 1962 – Ferranti Ltd. switched on the Atlas, the UK’s first supercomputer. It was the most powerful computer in the world at the time and doubled the UK’s scientific computing capability.
In 1963 – The CBS broadcast of the college football game between Army and Navy featured the first use of video instant replay during a sports telecast. Some people got confused and called to complain.
In 1972 – The last Apollo moon mission, Apollo 17 was launched. The crew took the famous Blue Marble picture that now graces desktop background everywhere.
In 1999 – Six months after its birth, Napster was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. The Industry refused to settle, thus insuring that digital music sales would remain low for years to come.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
Did that really happen?
In 1877 – Thomas Edison tested out his new phonograph invention, by recording the first lines of the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” He recreated the event in 1927.
In 1957 – Responding to Sputnik, the United States launched the Vanguard TV3. The rocket only made it a little over a meter off the launchpad before it fell back and was destroyed. A fuel leak was thought to have caused the failure.
In 2006 – NASA revealed photographs from the Martian Global Surveyor, of two craters called Terra Sirenum and Centauri Montes which appeared to show the evidence that water existed on the surface Mars, as recently as five years before.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.