This Day in Computer History: September 22

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This Day in Computer History

1888

The scientific units ampere, ohm, and volt are officially adopted at the Electrical Conference in Paris, France.

1980

Paul Allen of Microsoft first contacted Rod Black of Seattle Computer Products to explore the possibility of sub-licensing the 86-DOS operating system to customers. When Microsoft later licenses the system to IBM, one of the world’s largest computer manufacturers, a legal battle arises.

1983

Ron Austin and Kevin Poulsen, better known by the handle “Dark Dante,” are arrested for hacking into the ARPANET. Because he was a minor, Poulsen wasn’t prosecuted, but Austin received three years’ probation for the offense.

1986

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in the case of NEC Corp. v. Intel Corp., that microcode embedded in Intel microprocessors constituted copyrightable material, the same as any printed material, that reverse engineering the microcode didn’t infringe upon the microcode copyright, and that the independent development of similar microcode was not infringement. The ruling establishes, once and for all, that code can be copyrighted, setting the single most important legal precedent in the history of the computer industry.

1991

Erik Labs released the last official version of Bimodem, one of the last file transfer applications developed specifically for BBS use.

1993

RemoteAccess BBS 2.01 was released.

1997

Compaq introduced the first NetPC, the Deskpro 4000N, featuring a 166 MHz Pentium processor, a 1.6GB hard drive, 32 MB RAM, and one PCI slot running on the Windows NT 4.0 operating system. The NetPC is a standard for diskless computers created by the Oracle Corporation. Price: US$1,149

1999

Bidding on an eBay auction claiming to be selling five hundred pounds of marijuana reaches $10 million before the site’s officials closed it down.

U.S. and Australian authorities jointly announced a series of raids on hackers alleged to have been involved in “Page-Jacking” internet users browsing legitimate websites for the purpose of diverting them to pornographic sites. According to the U.S. authorities, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission estimates that upwards of twenty-five million of the one billion sites on the web may be actively affected by Page-Jacking, including several gaming sites for children and the Harvard Law Review.

2000

Twenty-year old Jason Diekman, better known by the handles “Dark Lord” or “Shadow Knight,” was arrested by Federal agents on allegation that he intercepted usernames and passwords from a number of university networks, including those of Harvard University. Diekman later admitted that he hacked into “hundreds, maybe thousands” of computers across the nation, including those of Cornell University, Harvard, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Stanford University, and University of California campuses in Fullerton, Los Angeles and San Diego. In 2002, Diekman received a twenty-one month prison sentence and $87,000 in fines.

2005

Symantec, a developer of security software, announced its intent to acquire WholeSecurity, a developer of anti-phishing technology.

2006

The first OneWebDay is observed. The day is intended to be a celebration of the internet, on which internet users are encouraged to reflect upon and demonstrate the ways in which the internet has affected their lives. It’s “anchor celebration” is held in Battery Park in New York City, with addresses made by technology advocates Craig Newmark, Drew Schutte, and Scott Heiferman.

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.