This Day in Computer History: September 23

This Day in Computer History: September 23
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This Day in Computer History

1974

During the International Broadcasting Convention held in London, England, the BBC inaugurated a two-year government-sanctioned trial of the Ceefax teletext system, one of the earliest forerunners of the internet. Ceefax broadcast news and financial bulletins five times a day via channels normally reserved for subtitles. The system’s initial capacity was roughly thirty pages or screens of data.

Philips acquired the American electronics manufacturer Magnavox to form what is today one of the largest electronics companies in the world.

1980

Rod Black entered into a non-exclusive arrangement to license the 86-DOS operating system to Microsoft for ten thousand dollars. The fee gave Microsoft the right to distribute 86-DOS to any number of end-users and to further sublicense the system to computer manufacturers for an additional ten thousand dollars, or fifteen thousand dollars when providing the third-party with the system’s source code.

1985

Apple Computer filed suit against Steve Jobs, alleging that Jobs’ departure from the company with several key employees had been pre-meditated.

1997

At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft released the first beta test of Windows NT 5.0.

IBM announced the IBM WorkPad handheld computer, featuring 1MB RAM. Price: US $399

1999

Intel warned computer manufacturers to delay shipments of computers with Pentium III CPUs featuring 820 chipsets and Rambus DRAM, after the discovery of unresolved application issues that lead to system failures.

2002

Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross released the first public version of their ground-breaking web browser Mozilla Firefox through the Mozilla Corporation as ”Phoenix 0.1.″ Due to trademark conflicts with Phoenix Technologies and copyright conflicts with the Firebird free database software project, the name of the system was later changed. The release came in response to what Hyatt and Ross perceived as feature creep in Netscape and software bloat in Mozilla’s earlier browser. When version 1.0 was finally released on Novermber 9, 2004, it was a run-away success.

2006

In Berlin, Germany, the GPL Violations Project won a lawsuit brought against D-Link Germany GmbH alleging that the company distributed portions of the Linux kernel on one of its network storage products in violation of the software’s GNU General Public License (GPL). D-Link initially responded to the suit by claiming that the GPL wasn’t legally binding. However, the case disproves that notion and set a crucial precedent for open source advocates everywhere. As a result of the court’s ruling, D-Link agreed to cease and desist from distributing the infringing product.

Microsoft released an interim build of Windows Vista to its beta testers.

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