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