Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 is the first comprehensive legislation in the U.S. to identify and provide for the prosecution of crimes committed through and against computer systems. In 1989, a Cornell University student becomes the first person prosecuted under the 1986 law for deploying a virus that shuts down computers at NASA, Purdue University and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
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The Mark 1

The Mark 1 computer is developed by Harvard graduate Howard H. Aiken at IBM in the early 1940s. Officially known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), the machine can add or subtract two numbers in three-tenths of a second, multiply them in four seconds, and divide them in ten seconds. The computer is 50 feet long, 8 feet tall, and weighs approximately 5 tons.
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The Internet

The Internet is born on October 29, 1969. UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock leads a team of engineers in sending the first message from one remote computer to another on ARPANET. The actual message sent from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute is the text "lo."
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Computer science

Purdue University establishes the first formal computer science department and degree program in October 1962. Computer science had been taught at many universities prior to 1962, but students received degrees in other disciplines, usually mathematics or electrical engineering. The first computer science related courses were offered by Harvard University in the late 1940s.
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Computer generated film

Bell Telephone scientist Edward Zajac creates the first computer generated film in 1963. The film "Simulation of a two-giro gravity attitude control system" shows how the path of a satellite could be altered as it orbits the Earth. The animation is created on an IBM 7090 mainframe computer. Soon after, other scientific researchers begin to develop computer generated films to graphically describe their activities.
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The laser printer

Xerox researcher Gary Starkweather invents the laser printer in 1969. Starkweather uses a laser beam with the xerography process to create a laser printer method. Remarkably, Xerox shows little initial interest in his invention. Starkweather persists and continues to refine the laser printer technology. He completes the first working laser printer in 1971.
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The VAX

Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX computer is released on October 25, 1977 at the company's annual meeting of shareholders. VAX is an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension. It is the first commercially available 32 bit machine and a major milestone in computer history. The Vax is built from the ground-up along with its highly successful Virtual Memory System (VMS) operating system.
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CICS

Customer Information Control System (CICS), one of IBM's most durable and long-lasting products, is released in 1968. The architecture for the product allows it to be incorporated into new platforms over the ensuing years. Recent reports found that over 90% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies, and most state and national governments, rely on CICS for their core business functions.
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WordPerfect

The WordPerfect word processing program is written for Data General minicomputers in 1982 by Satellite Software International. The program is ported to the IBM PC as the company renames itself WordPerfect Corporation. The program's popularity takes off with WordPerfect 4.2 in 1986, and becomes the de facto standard word processor until the mid 1990s, when it is eclipsed by Microsoft Word.
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Sketchpad

Ph.D. student Ivan Sutherland uses the TX-2 computer at MIT to develop the Sketchpad computer program in 1963. Sketchpad is the first computer program to utilize a complete graphical user interface. It uses an x-y point display as well as a light pen. The program also pioneers the use of objects and instances, shedding light onto object oriented programming.
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White House website

The first White House website is launched by the Clinton administration on October 21, 1994. The site's home page features a large image of the White House, the President's message, the Vice President's message, and a guest book. Two years later, President Clinton orders all federal agencies to fully utilize information technology to make the information of their agency easily accessible to the public.
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Red Hat Linux

Red Hat Linux is released in October 1994. In need of new open source software products to sell, the ACC Corporation agrees to market and distribute Marc Ewing's Red Hat Linux product. As sales take off, the ACC Corp changes its name to Red Hat Software, Inc. Red Hat subsequently becomes the most popular brand of Linux in the world.
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Black Monday

On October 19, 1987, the S&P 500 loses 20.5%, the Dow Jones loses 22.6% and the NASDAQ goes down 11.3%, marking the largest one-day decline in stock market history. One of the major causes of the crash is the use of automated computer program trading. During the rapid decline, the markets are found to be controlled more by computers rather than by investor decisions.
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Google

Google transitions from a search engine into a multi-faceted information services company in 2002. Having increased its search engine capability to three billion web documents, the company sets a new course. In 2002, Google launches an enterprise search appliance application, Google News, an advertising key word program, and Froogle, a shopping search engine.
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Web banner ads

The inevitable occurs in October 1994: the first banner ad appears on a World Wide Web page. HotWired, an early and prolific website content creator, is credited with inventing the banner ad motif. The first banner ad is a 320 by 40 pixel graphic stating "Have you ever clicked your mouse here?" The ad appears on HotWired.com and is linked to the AT&T website.
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MP3s

Eiger Labs sells the world's first MP3 player in the summer of 1998 for $165. The 32 MB portable holds up to 32 minutes of near CD-quality audio or 64 minutes of FM stereo-quality audio. The player is very basic and is not user expandable, though owners can upgrade the memory to 64 MB by sending the player back to Eiger Labs.
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IBM 5100 Portable Computer

IBM unveils the IBM 5100 Portable Computer in 1975. Code named Project Mercury during its development, the portable is a briefcase-sized minicomputer with 64 KB of RAM, a tape storage drive, a keyboard, and a built-in 5-inch screen. The machine weighs 55 pounds and starts at $9,000. The 5100 is IBM's first personal computer.
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Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee begins work on a hypertext GUI browser and editor in October 1990. One month later he produces the first web server and web page. The first web server is nxoc01.cern.ch, later called info.cern.ch. The first web page is http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web.
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Tron

One of the first computer generated movies, "Tron," is released in 1982. A hacker is split into molecules and is transported into a computer where he teams with a book keeping program and his girlfriend as they try to replace the enemy Master Control program with Tron, a heroic independent security program.
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3340 Winchester sealed hard disk

In 1973, IBM ships the model 3340 Winchester sealed hard disk drive, the predecessor of all current hard disk drives. Nearly two decades earlier, IBM had developed the first computer with a hard disk drive, the IBM 305. The 305's disk drive came with fifty 24-inch platters and a total capacity of five million characters.
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ISDN and DSL

Bellcore researcher Joseph Lechleider originates broadband technologies in the late 1980s. He demonstrates the feasibility of sending broadband signals via telephone lines, which starts the movement of analog to digital. This research effort eventually spawns new transmission technologies such as Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL).
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GO TO statements

Computer Science professor Edsger W. Dijkstra writes his classic programming paper "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" in the Communications of the ACM in March 1968. This paper outlines Dijkstra's observation that the quality of programmers is a decreasing function of the density of GO TO statements in the programs they produce.
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NeXT computer

Steve Jobs resigns from Apple Computer in 1985 to start a company called NeXT. The NeXT computer is intended to be an affordable supercomputer aimed at the academic market. Unfortunately, the computer fails in the marketplace as NeXT churns through $250 million in capital. The failure is due to its $6,000 price tag and the fact that there is no useful software for it.
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Grid Compass 1101

The first true laptop computer is designed in 1979 by British engineer William Moggridge for Grid Systems Corporation. The $10,000 Grid Compass 1101 features a clamshell design and is one-fifth the weight of comparable computers. The computer runs from batteries, has 384-KB of bubble memory, and is equipped with a 320 by 200-pixel plasma display.
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Longest Internet domain name

What is the longest Internet domain name in the world? According to the domain registrars, the longest legal domain name is 63 characters starting with a letter or number. The longest domain name in the world reportedly belongs to the official homepage of a Welsh, United Kingdom village called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
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Cray Research

Computer designer Seymour Cray founds Cray Research in 1972. After several years of development, Cray Research's first product, the Cray-1 Supercomputer, is released in 1976. Faced with several costly development projects, the company runs out of money and files for bankruptcy in 1995. Cray dies of injuries suffered in a car accident on October 5, 1996 at age 71.
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The IBM 1401

The IBM 1401 Data Processing System is released in October 1959. Priced at $2,500 per month, this is IBM's first affordable general-purpose computer for business. The 1401 is host to one of the earliest high-level business-oriented programming languages, Report Program Generator (RPG), which increases its usability and popularity. The IBM 1401 is the first computer to sell 10,000 units.
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The 386 microprocessor

Intel Corporation introduces the 80386 microprocessor chip in October 1985. The 386 is a 32-bit microprocessor containing over 275,000 transistors on a single chip, capable of four million operations per second. This gives PCs as much speed and power as older mainframes and minicomputers and makes graphical operating environments like Windows and OS/2 practical.
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The PowerPC

Apple, IBM, and Motorola announce an alliance to create the PowerPC on October 2, 1991. The PowerPC is based on IBM's Power microprocessor, one of the first superscalar RISC implementations. The alliance creates two other companies: Taligent to develop an object-oriented operating system for the PowerPC, and Kaleida Labs to develop multimedia software, tools and scripting languages.
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Stanford University

California Governor Leland Stanford purchases 650 acres of land in 1876. He later buys adjoining properties to bring his farm to more than 8,000 acres. This land is the future site of Stanford University, which opens its doors on October 1, 1891. Through the 20th century, Stanford University establishes itself as a world-class engineering and technology institution at the center of Silicon Valley.
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