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Telex messaging network comes on line
Networking & The Web
Like the Volkswagen Beetle and modern freeway systems, the Telex messaging network comes out of the early period of Germany’s Third Reich. Telex starts as a way to distribute military messages, but soon becomes a world-wide network of both official and commercial text messaging that will persist in some countries into the 2000s. -
Birth of the Modem
Computers “talk” over ordinary voice phone lines through modems. Developed in 1949 for transmitting radar signals by Jack Harrington’s group at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center (AFCRC) near Boston, the modem modulates digital data into sounds, and demodulates received sounds into digital data. (MODulation + DEModulation = MODEM). -
Pilot ACE
Based on ideas from Alan Turing, Britain´s Pilot ACE computer is constructed at the National Physical Laboratory. "We are trying to build a machine to do all kinds of different things simply by programming rather than by the addition of extra apparatus," Turing said at a symposium on large-scale digital calculating machinery in 1947 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. -
Star Trek debuts
Popular Culture
One of the most popular television series of all-time, Star Trek tells of the journeys of the starship Enterprise and its 5-year mission of exploration. Star Trek speculated on technologies such as voice-recognition, handheld computing and communications, human computer interaction, and machine-supported medical diagnosis. -
MS-DOS
MS-DOS startup screen
Software & Languages
MS-DOS, or Microsoft Disk Operating System, the basic software for the newly released IBM PC, is the start of a long partnership between IBM and Microsoft, which Bill Gates and Paul Allen had founded only six years earlier. IBM’s PC inspired hardware imitators in the 1980s, but for software, most licensed MS-DOS. -
PowerBook 100 laptop computer
Computers
Apple's Macintosh Portable meets with little success in the marketplace and leads to a complete redesign of Apple's line of portable computers. All three PowerBooks introduced featured a built-in trackball, internal floppy drive, and palm rests, which would eventually become typical of 1990s laptop design. The PowerBook 100 was the entry-level machine, while the PowerBook 140 was more powerful and had a larger memory. -
Apple iPhone
Apple launches the iPhone - a combination of web browser, music player and cell phone - which could download new functionality in the form of "apps" (applications) from the online Apple store. The touchscreen enabled smartphone also had built-in GPS navigation, high-definition camera, texting, calendar, voice dictation, and weather reports. -
Microsoft introduces Xbox One
Microsoft had not released a new version of the Xbox for almost eight years when it introduces the Xbox One. The Kinect movement-based user interface, and streaming entertainment options such as Xbox Music and Xbox Video, were a significant part of the new system. Games were offered via Blu-ray discs, or by download from Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, though unlike most consoles, it offered no backward compatibility for earlier Xbox games.
