Welcome to the fifth installment of Tech History Thursday! If you’re keeping up to date with tech news by reading Techaeris, you’re just as interested in the origins of our high-tech world as we are. This weekly snapshot will give you a look at what happened throughout history as it relates to tech. Keep reading for this week’s tech history rundown.
July 13th
- 1945 – First atomic bomb arrives, partly assembled, in New Mexico.
- 1989 – Compaq and IBM forge a cross-licensing agreement for patents filed before July 1st, 1993.
- 1995 – US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announces plans to divide radio spectrums into wireless cable and satellite.
- 2004 – Google acquires image processing service Picasa.
- 2011 – Netflix splits DVD and streaming rental fees.
July 14th
- 1999 – Hollywood Video begins rentals of Sega Dreamcast’s only game, Sonic Adventure.
- 2004 – Intel releases the 1.5GHz Pentium M 705 processor.
- 2011 – Music streaming service Spotify launches in the US.
July 15th
- 1928 – The Enigma machine encodes its first ever message.
- 1954 – A prototype of the Boeing 707, the first commercial jet transport plane built in the US, has its maiden flight.
- 1983 – Nintendo launches the Family Computer video game console, affectionately referred to as the Famicom.
- 2000 – Microsoft releases the C# programming language.
- 2006 – Twitter is launched.
July 16th
- 1951 – Dan Bricklin, the inventor of the first spreadsheet program, VisiCalc, is born.
- 1995 – Amazon.com opens its virtual doors.
- 1998 – University of Texas Health Science Center and the Institute for Genomic Research announce that they have mapped 1.1 million base pairs of DNA in the syphilis genome.
- 2004 – Michael Dell steps aside as CEO of Dell.
- 2012 – Former Google VP Marissa Mayer is appointed as CEO of Yahoo!
July 17th
- 1955 0 Arco, Idaho becomes the first town to be run on nuclear power.
- 1975 – The first orbital docking of two nation’s spacecraft occurs when the United States’ Apollo 18 and Russia’s Soyuz 19 successfully dock and crew members shake hands in space.
- 2009 – Ford launches a more energy-efficient engine called the EcoBoost Engine.
July 18th
- 1968 – Intel Corporation is incorporated. Intel would go on to invent the microchip.
- 1986 – Submersible Alvin’s videotapes revealing the Titanic’s remains are released to the public.
- 1990 – Soviet space station Mir’s airlock hatch cannot be closed after a 7 hour space walk.
- Rosanna Della Corte, whose egg was artificially inseminated, gives birth to a son.
- 2013 – Samsung launches the first 1 terabyte solid state hard drive.
July 19th
- 1843 – The first iron-hulled, propeller driven steamship is launched, dubbed the SS Great Britain.
- 1912 – A meteorite explodes over Holbrook, AZ, raining 16,000 bits of debris onto and around the town.
- 1950 – NASA’s first rocket launch from Cape Canaveral is scrubbed because of an emergency aircraft landing at the range. The second attempt does not the the main chamber of the rocket igniting, leading to a second scrub. of the German V-2.
- The Palm IIIe handheld is introduced by Palm Computing.
- 2011 – The US FBI raids the homes of suspected Anonymous kingpins.
There you have it! Which of these events do you think has had the most impact on how technology has been shaped? Sound off in the comments below.
Have a favorite moment in tech history that you’d like to add to next week’s snapshot? Leave a comment or connect with us on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, or by email!
Related Techaeris Articles: Tech History Thursday: Week 4
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
