Voicemail

During the late 1970s, Gordon Matthews develops the technology that will eventually be called voicemail. His Voice Message Exchange manages electronic messages in a digital format. Matthews forms the Voice Message Express (VMX) company in 1979. Gordon's wife records the first greeting on the new voicemail system. Matthews is awarded a patent in 1982 and sells the first system to 3M.
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MP3

Tomislav Uzelac of Advanced Multimedia Products deploys the first MP3 player in 1997. Five years earlier, the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute Integrierte Schaltungen research center in Erlangen, Germany laid the foundation for MP3 by researching high quality, low bit-rate audio coding through its project named EUREKA. By the end of the 1990s, the MP3 technology become a huge commercial success.
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The subroutine

EDSAC computer programmer David Wheeler develops two significant contributions to computer programming during the early 1950s: the subroutine and program code library. He also develops the “Wheeler Jump”, which allows a program to pass control to a subroutine. The "Wheeler Jump" is the precursor of the Goto statement.
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ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is introduced in 1963. ASCII is a universal standard for computers that allows machines from different manufacturers to exchange data. 128 unique 7-bit strings stand for either a letter of the English alphabet, one of the Arabic numerals, one of an assortment of punctuation marks and symbols, or a special function.
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Wide Area Network

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) researchers Thomas Merrill and Lawrence G. Roberts create the first Wide Area Network (WAN) in 1965. The network connects the TX-2 computer at MIT to the Q-32 computer in Santa Monica, California via a dedicated telephone line with acoustic couplers.
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Yahoo!

Yahoo! is born in February 1994. The website, originally named "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web," is developed by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It begins as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long, hundreds of people are accessing their guide from well beyond Stanford University.
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DEC

MIT colleagues Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson establish Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957. They began building small digital hardware modules that can be combined together to be used in a lab setting. By 1961, the company is making a profit and begins construction of their first computer, the PDP-1.
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Interface copyrights

Apple Computer files a copyright infringement lawsuit in 1988 to prevent Microsoft and HP from using visual graphical user interface elements that are similar to those in Apple's operating systems. Apple loses all claims in the lawsuit. Coincidentally, midway through the suit, Xerox files a lawsuit against Apple, claiming Apple had infringed copyrights Xerox held on its graphical user interface.
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Wipro

The Indian company Wipro begins in 1945 as a maker of sunflower oils and laundry soap. The company is called Western India Products Limited until the 1980s when it enters the technology industry in Bangalore. Led by Azim Premji, the son of Wipro's original founder, the company transcends from manufacturer to global software services.
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Startup.com

Startup.com is a documentary film released in 2001 that chronicles the development of a rising Internet company. The film tells the story of two young and inexperienced graduates who receive millions of venture capital dollars to launch a dot com company. As the project progresses, personalities and egos clash during long work hours, technology is stolen, and the project never works as planned.
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Shareware

Bob Wallace coins the term "shareware" in the mid 1980s to describe his software distribution idea and the marketing model conceived by Jim Button and Andrew Fluegelman. Between the three of them, they establish "shareware" as a viable software sales and marketing method. Today, Shareware is a highly popular software distribution channel for free and fee-based software.
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Big Blue

The famous "Big Blue" nickname of IBM is adopted in the 1960s. The "Blue" is derived from the blue suits worn by the sales staff. Others say it is inspired by the big blue boxes containing the large mainframe computers of the 1960s. The "Big" is in reference to the computer giant's size and influence in the computer industry since its incorporation in 1911.
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BBS

The first computer bulletin board system (BBS) goes live on February 16, 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. During a winter blizzard, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess piece together a computerized answering machine and message center that allows fellow computer hobbyists to send and receive announcements and meeting notes. They call it the Computerized Bulletin Board System.
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Unisys

Elmer Ambrose Sperry starts the Sperry Gyroscope Company in 1910 in Chicago, selling aircraft components and fire control systems. The company is renamed Sperry Corporation in 1933. Sperry acquires UNIVAC computer make Remington Rand in 1955 to form Sperry Rand Corporation. The computer and technology company eventually merges with Burroughs Corporation to form the Unisys Corporation in 1986.
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Microsoft IPO

Microsoft's IPO opens on the stock market at $21 a share on February 14, 1986. At this time, Microsoft is making much of its revenue on Macintosh software, BASIC language interpreters and MS DOS. After the IPO, Microsoft begins a tremendous run producing substantial earnings increases over the next two decades. By 2003, a $2,100 investment at the 1986 IPO offering price is worth $1.5 million.
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First integrated circuit

Texas Instruments researcher Jack Kilby develops the first integrated circuit in the summer of 1958. Working alone in the lab, Kilby refines his idea to make chip components out of the same block of semiconductor material. In September 1958, he demonstrates the world's first integrated circuit, which works perfectly in all tests.
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PalmPilot

Palm Computing founder Jeff Hawkins develops the PalmPilot in 1994. After being sold to US Robotics in 1996, Palm introduces the PalmPilot 1000, which sells 350,000 units and wins PC Computing’s MVP "Usability Achievement of the Year" Award. Jeff Hawkins goes on to create Handspring, another handheld device maker.
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Computers in the future

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular Mechanics, 1949
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Deep Blue

Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in a chess match on February 10, 1996. Deep Blue is a chess computer designed and produced by IBM. It wins the game against Garry Kasparov, marking the first time a computer has ever defeated a reigning world champion under regular time controls. After an upgrade, Deep Blue wins a six-game match against Garry Kasparov in May 1997.
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Compaq

Three former Texas Instruments managers found Compaq Computer Corporation in February 1982. Sketched on a paper place mat in a Houston pie shop, the first product is a portable personal computer able to run all of the software being developed for the IBM PC. Compaq will enjoy a magnificent run through the 1980s and 1990s. Hewlett-Packard acquires Compaq in May 2002.
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Atanasoff-Berry Computer

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the world's first electronic digital computer, is built in the 1930s at Iowa State University. It incorporates several innovations, such as binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions. The computer influences the later development of the ENIAC, which many credit as the first digital-age computer.
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The dancing baby

The dancing baby becomes one of the web's first fads in 1998. The dancing baby is a short 3D animation of a small baby wearing diapers and dancing. It is first created by Michael Girard and later tweaked by Ron Lussier at LucasArts. Lussier releases the dancing baby on a CompuServe forum and it is quickly passed along the Internet via email and other bulletin board systems.
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World's smallest web server

Stanford Professor Vaughan Pratt creates the world's smallest web server in February 1999. Using off-the-shelf components, Pratt squeezes the hardware and software needed to operate a website into a package about the size of a box of matches. Pratt puts the tiny server online and news spreads rapidly. In the following five days, the little web server gets 78,000 hits.
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Netscape Navigator

The Netscape Navigator browser is officially retired by AOL in February 2008. The prolific web browser helped launch the commercial Internet and was used by most people seeing the World-Wide-Web for the first time during the mid-1990s. Navigator was the leading web browser when AOL acquired Netscape in November 1998 for $4.2 billion.
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Mitnick hack

Kevin Mitnick is arrested in February 1995 on a twenty-five-count indictment that includes illegal possession of computer files stolen from such companies as Motorola and Sun Microsystems. Over a two and a half year period, Mitnick hacks into computers, steals corporate secrets, scrambles phone networks, and breaks into the National Defense Warning System, causing millions of dollars in losses.
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MapQuest.com

The first consumer-focused interactive mapping website is launched at MapQuest.com in February 1996. With innovative technology and the first-of-its-kind consumer website, MapQuest.com captures the attention of the Internet consumer and business market. The company originated thirty years earlier as a cartographic services division producing free road maps given to gas station customers.
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IIS

Microsoft's web server product Internet Information Server is released as IIS 1.0 in February 1996. Attempting to catch up to Sun and NCSA, the product is built and tested using Microsoft's own websites. It supports the three current Internet protocols, HTTP, FTP, and Gopher, and includes support for CGI, Perl, and ISAPI programming interfaces.
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Mosaic web browser

The first version of the Mosaic web browser is released in February 1993. Mosaic provides support for graphics, sound, and video clips. In addition, it introduces web forms, enabling many powerful new browser applications. Mosaic quickly becomes the most popular web browser and helps accelerate the growth of the web in 1993.
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