This Day in Computer History: September 18

This Day in Computer History: September 18
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This Day in Computer History

1974

The British government officially approved BBC’s Ceefax and ITV’s Oracle teletext systems for a two-year field trial. Britain’s teletext data services, which were transmitted through cable television, were one of the earliest forerunners of the later Internet.

1984

Software Arts, founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston to develop VisiCalc, and VisiCorp, one of the earliest software publishers, settled their lawsuit over VisiCalc, the first “killer app” for computers, out of court. VisiCorp, which had taken over distributing and marketing VisiCalc, brought the sixty million dollar suit against Software Arts, alleging that the company had not maintained the software’s competitive edge. Software Arts filed a suit in turn alleging that VisiCorp was not effectively marketing the product. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed to the public.

1986

Motorola announced the Motorola 68030 microprocessor, which incorporated about three hundred thousand transistors.

1987

A hacker stole about one million dollars of software from AT&T computers. Microsoft’s stock split for the first but not the last time in history.

1989

NeXT, the company founded by Steve Jobs after his forced resignation from Apple, released the NeXTstep OS, a Unix operating system based on the Mach kernel, featuring some source code from BSD Unix. Eventually, the system would be acquired by Apple and used in the creation of the Rhapsody operating system.

1990

NeXT released the NeXTstation, a workstation computer specifically optimized for use with the company’s NeXTstep OS, featuring a 25MHz or 33MHz Motorola 68040 processor, an FPU Motorola 68882 math co-processor, a 105 MB hard drive, 8MB RAM, and a monochrome monitor. Price: $4,995

1995

The web browser Netscape Communications 2.0 was released. It was the first version to support Java applets and the first browser to include a full mail reader, which made this the first “Internet suite.” Soon after its release, AOL began bundling their software with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to compete with Netscape.

1998

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was formed in California as a non-profit corporation to oversee Internet domain management on behalf of the United States Government.

Microsoft announced that 1.5 million copies of its Windows ‘98 upgrade were sold since its June 25th release.

2001

The Nimda computer worm is first discovered. It spread through email quicker than any worm before it, infecting Microsoft IIS network servers.

2003

The “Swen” or “Gibe” worm is first discovered. Spread through email disguised as a Microsoft security advisory, the worm takes advantage of a two-year-old hole in Internet Explorer to disable popular security applications.

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

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

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