1975 – Atari filed for a patent on the sit-down “cockpit” arcade cabinet, literally putting you inside the game. The game Hi-Way with the slogan “Hi Way — All It Needs Is Wheels”, was the first Atari game to use the cabinet. It was a first-person driver in which you had to dodge cars and– well– drive.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN%2FD243626
1984 – The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened in Monterey, California. It not only provided a world-class place to learn about sea life, but inspired millions of screensavers and wallpaper images.
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/about/our-history
2004 – Mark Shuttleworth sent out an email to Ubuntu developers announcing the first official release of the Linux-based operating system, Warty Warthog. Every six months since, a new version of Ubuntu comes out with a new alliterative animal-inspired name.
http://lwn.net/Articles/107267/
2016 – Nintendo released a video showing off the Nintendo Switch game console for the first time. It demonstrated the hybrid tablet nature of the console and showed off the Joy-Con controllers.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/nintendos-next-console-switch-is-a-consoletablet-hybrid/
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.