This Day in Computer History: October 7

This Day in Computer History

1952

American mathematician Raphael Robinson discovers the Mersenne prime number M2203, which can be expressed as 22,203 - 1, using the Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC). The number, which is 664 digits long, is the record-breaking fourth Mersenne prime discover by Robinson since the beginning of the year.

Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver received a patent on the world’s first system of bar codes (No. 2,612,994). The codes mark the beginning of the use of computers in every day commerce. Unlike the later ubiquitous UPC bar codes, the Woodland and Silver barcodes were composed of concentric rings of varying thickness forming a sort of bull’s eye of numeric data.

1954

IBM demonstrated an all-transistor calculator that required only five percent of the power typically consumed by an electronic calculator. Within three years, IBM will introduce the IBM 608 to the market, the world’s first commercial all-transistor calculator.

1974

The boards of directors of Philips and MCA officially ratified the merger of the two companies’ disc systems. The two companies had both been independently developing separate versions of what would later become the Compact Disc format.

1997

Sun Microsystems filed suit against Microsoft for bundling a non-standard implementation of the Java programming language into version 4.0 of its Internet Explorer web browser. Sun claims the move constitutes a breach of contract.

1998

Representatives from Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) supervise the destruction of the largest shipment of pirated software ever intercepted by United States Customs officials. The shipment, which contained forty thousand pirated games in Compact Disc format, was discovered in Miami, Florida on its way to Paraguay from Taiwan and Singapore during a routine inspection. Forty-four different PlayStation titles were included in the shipment, NBA Shoot-Out ‘98, Parappa The Rapper, and Rally Cross. All told, the forty thousand discs had a combined retail value of over $1.5 million.

2001

The developer behind the Renegade BBS, Jeff Herrings, publicly announced that he would not longer continue work on the once-popular software that had, during the age of dial-up modems, powered some of the most popular communities on the web.

2003

Yahoo! acquired Overture Services, Inc. for $1.63 billion. The company was used by Yahoo! to power “sponsored searches,” which allowed business to inject links into searches for certain keywords. Prior to its acquisition, Overture was the chief rival of Google’s AdWord service and had, in fact, unsuccessfully filed an infringement suit attempting to bar Google from associating keywords with ads.

2007

The website of security firm Trend Micro was hacked by a Turkish hacker known as “Janizary” or, in other hacks, “Utku”.

This post is part of the series: A Chronology of Computer History for the Month of October: This Day in Computer History

This series provides a daily account of what happened on this day in the history of computing and technology. It discusses developments, breaking news, new releases and global implications that occurred as a result of these ground breaking events.

1. This Day in Computer History: October 4
2. This Day in Computer History: October 5
3. This Day in Computer History: October 6
4. This Day in Computer History: October 7
5. This Day in Computer History: October 8
6. This Day in Computer History: October 9
7. This Day in Computer History: October 10
8. This Day in Computer History: October 11
9. This Day in Computer History: October 12
10. This Day in Computer History: October 13
11. This Day in Computer History: October 14
12. This Day in Computer History: October 15
13. This Day in Computer History: October 16
14. This Day in Computer History: October 17
15. This Day in Computer History: October 18
16. This Day in Computer History: October 19
17. This Day in Computer History: October 20
18. This Day in Computer History: October 21
19. This Day in Computer History: October 22
20. This Day in Computer History: October 23
21. This Day in Computer History: October 24
22. This Day in Computer History: October 25
23. This Day in Computer History: October 26
24. This Day in Computer History: October 27
25. This Day in Computer History: October 28
26. This Day in Computer History: October 29
27. This Day in Computer History: October 30
28. This Day in Computer History: October 31