Friday, August 7, 2009

Blaise Pascal

In 1642, French mathematician, physicist, and theologian Blaise Pascal begins developing a device to help his father add and subtract sums of money. His Arithmetic Machine is introduced a few years later. It is cited by many as the first mechanical calculator, of which the basic design principle is still used today in water meters and modern-day odometers.
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Thursday, August 6, 2009

Windows 95

Microsoft releases its landmark Windows 95 operating system in August 1995 with a $300 million launch campaign. Windows 95, originally code-named Chicago, is Microsoft's first 32-bit operating system for PC consumers. Among its biggest draws is its large virtual memory and the new Internet Explorer web browser. Windows 95 sales reach one million copies two months after its launch.
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

The Computer History Museum

The Computer History Museum is established in Mountain View, California in 1996. The mission of the museum is to preserve the artifacts of the information age and celebrate computing history. The Museum is home to one of the largest collection of computing artifacts in the world, comprised of over 4,000 items, 10,000 images, 4,000 feet of cataloged documentation and several gigabytes of software.
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009

SHARE

The IBM User Group SHARE celebrates its 50th year of existence in 2005. The SHARE user group holds its first meeting at the Rand Corporation on August 15, 1955 in Santa Monica, Calif. The first meeting is called to help scientific users grapple with the problems of IBM’s first major commercial mainframe, the 704.
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Monday, August 3, 2009

Denial of service

On August 3, 2000, Canadian federal prosecutors charge a fifteen-year-old boy with fifty-four counts of illegal access to computers, plus ten counts of mischief to data for his attacks on Amazon.com, eBay, Dell Computer, and Yahoo. During the month of February, the boy carries out several "denial of service" attacks on these websites causing service interruptions and some of the websites to go down.
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Sunday, August 2, 2009

Borland

Borland Software opens for business in Ireland with three employees in August 1981. Borland incorporates in California in May 1982 under the leadership of Philip Kahn. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Borland develops and releases highly regarded software products such as SideKick, Paradox, QuatroPro, Turbo Pascal, and Delphi.
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Saturday, August 1, 2009

Windows

IBM and Microsoft agree in August 1985 to produce the OS/2 operating system for IBM's PS/2 PC. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues working on its Windows product and releases Windows 3.0 in 1990. Windows' ensuing popularity over OS/2 prompts Microsoft to end the OS/2 agreement with IBM. OS/2 eventually fades away. IBM announces that sales of OS/2 will officially end on December 23, 2005.
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