This Day in Computer History: November 16

This Day in Computer History: November 16
Page content

This Day in Computer History

1904

English electrical engineer John Ambrose Fleming invented the thermionic valve or vacuum tube. Vacuum tubes would be used to amplify or switch a electrical signal by controlling the direction in which electrons moved in a vacuum. The device would become and remain the foundation of electronic technology for decades to come.

1962

IBM introduced the IBM 1062 teller terminal and the IBM 7710 data communication system.

1982

Steve Jobs sent a request to the president of the British audio hardware manufacturer McIntosh Labs seeking permission use “Macintosh” as the name of its upcoming computer system. Jobs explained in the letter, “We have become very attached to the name Macintosh. Much like one’s own child, our product has developed a very definite personality.” On the advice of a lawyer, McIntosh Labs would reject the request. Two years later, Apple Computer would acquire the McIntosh trademark for “substantially” more than one hundred thousand dollars.

1984

USA Today launched one of the first syndicated electronic news services, which it called USA Today Update. The service provided summaries of business news articles through the Datatimes, GEnie, Minitel, The Source, and Trintex data services.

1992

The COMDEX trade show was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Event attendance was the highest in history. It featured two thousand corporate booths and was attended by one hundred forty-five thousand people. Advanced Micro Devices demonstrated its line of 50 MHz 80486 processors. IBM demonstrated its line of 100 MHz “Blue Lightning” 80486 processors.

Microsoft released its Microsoft Access 1.0 database application for Windows. Price: $99.

1998

Advanced Micro Devices released 366, 380, and 400 MHz versions of the AMD K6-2 processor, featuring bus speeds of 66, 95, and 100 MHz respectively. Price: $187, $213, and $283.

At the COMDEX trade show, Iomega unveiled its Zip 250 drive, featuring an external parallel port and SCSI connection. It was capable of writing to 100 MB and 250 MB cartridges. The transfer rate of the drive was up to 1.7MBps. Price: $199.

2000

ICANN announced that it would launch seven new top level domains (TLD) for the internet in an attempt to defray demand for the popular .com: .pro, .name, .museum, .info, .coop, .biz, and .aero.

2001

United States Customs Agents seize one hundred million dollars worth of pirated computer software in the course of Operation White Horse. It was the largest such seizure in U.S. history.

2005

Aurora SPARC released Aurora SPARC Linux Build 2.0 Beta 2.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was granted the right to retain control of the Internet despite international opposition which felt the United States and its policies was no longer a reliable manager.

This post is part of the series: A Chronology of Computer History for the Month of November: 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: November 4
  2. This Day in Computer History: November 5
  3. This Day in Computer History: November 6
  4. This Day in Computer History: November 7
  5. This Day in Computer History: November 9
  6. This Day in Computer History: November 10
  7. This Day in Computer History: November 11
  8. This Day in Computer History: November 12
  9. This Day in Computer History: November 13
  10. This Day in Computer History: November 14
  11. This Day in Computer History: November 15
  12. This Day in Computer History: November 16
  13. This Day in Computer History: November 17
  14. This Day in Computer History: November 18
  15. This Day in Computer History: November 19
  16. This Day in Computer History: November 20
  17. This Day in Computer History: November 21
  18. This Day in Computer History: November 22
  19. This Day in Computer History: November 24
  20. This Day in Computer History: November 25
  21. This Day in Computer History: November 26
  22. This Day in Computer History: November 27
  23. This Day in Computer History: November 28
  24. This Day in Computer History: November 29
  25. This Day in Computer History: November 30