Monday, March 14, 2011

The Source

William von Meister establishes The Source in 1978 as one of the first online services available to the general public. It offers information such as news sources, weather, stock quotations, a shopping service, electronic mail, various databases, online text of magazines, and airline schedules. Dial-up users pay monthly subscription fees and phone usage fees to use the text-based service.
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Sunday, March 13, 2011

"You've Got Mail"

The romantic comedy film "You've Got Mail" is released in 1998. A large chain bookstore owner spars with a local bookstore owner. All the while they have been corresponding with email without knowing who either of them are. They cannot stand each other in person but over the Internet they are very attracted to each other.
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Saturday, March 12, 2011

First point contact transistor

Bell Telephone Laboratories researchers John Bardeen and Walter Brattain develop the first point contact transistor in 1947. The transistor concept is demonstrated to executives at Bell, who are very impressed that the transistors do not need time to warm up, like existing vacuum tubes. They immediately realize the power of the transistor.
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Friday, March 11, 2011

WYSIWYG

Electronic print technologist Jonathan Seybold originates the WYSIWYG phrase in the 1980s. The phrase is an acronym for "what you see is what you get," and is used in computing to describe the seamlessness between the appearance of edited content and the final product. Syebold reportedly first uses the phrase after watching a Flip Wilson TV show comedy sketch.
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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Hangul

Korea's Haansoft Company develops its word processor program named "Hangul" in 1990. The program name is adopted from the Korean written language Hangul, meaning "Great Script". Hangul is optimally suited for the Korean language and has a 70% share of the entire Korean word processing software market, making it a virtual household name synonymous with "word processing."
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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Creating the Internet

During a March 1999 CNN interview with reporter Wolf Blitzer, Vice President Al Gore makes his famous claim to have "invented the Internet". What he actually says is "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Vice President Gore was one of the first government officials to have a personal website and coined the phrase "information superhighway."
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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Logo

South African native Seymour Papert pioneers the development of the Logo programming language in 1968. His team designs Logo as a computer language for children. Logo provides immediate feedback, aiding in the learning process. When a command is unable to be executed, Logo explains the problem instantly, allowing the user to learn from the mistake and debug intelligently.
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