On this day
Dates in computing history, with the Mimms Museum objects that go with them.
January
The Unix epoch begins
Unix systems count time as seconds since midnight UTC on this date. Programs still use that count today.
ARPANET switches to TCP/IP
The ARPANET stopped using its old host protocol and adopted TCP/IP, the rules the Internet still uses.
Gordon Moore is born
Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, was born in San Francisco. His 1965 observation about chip growth became known as Moore's law.
The first Bitcoin block is mined
Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, called the genesis block.
Commodore shows the Commodore 64
Commodore showed the C64 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Thomas J. Watson Jr. is born
Watson Jr. led IBM during the System/360 project.
Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone
Steve Jobs showed the first iPhone at the Macworld conference in San Francisco. It went on sale on June 29, 2007.
Donald Knuth is born
Knuth wrote The Art of Computer Programming.
Wikipedia goes online
Wikipedia launched as a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Apple introduces the MacBook Air
Steve Jobs pulled the thin laptop out of an office envelope at Macworld.
Apple announces the Lisa
Apple announced the Lisa, a business computer with a mouse and windows. It cost about $10,000 and sold poorly.
Paul Allen is born
Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates.
Apple airs its "1984" Super Bowl ad
Apple ran a one-time television ad during Super Bowl XVIII, two days before the Macintosh went on sale.
The Macintosh goes on sale
Apple introduced the Macintosh at its shareholder meeting. Two days earlier, a Super Bowl ad had teased it.
The Apollo 1 fire
A fire during a launch rehearsal killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. NASA redesigned the spacecraft before flying again.
Apple unveils the iPad
Steve Jobs presented the first iPad in San Francisco. It went on sale on April 3, 2010.
The Space Shuttle Challenger is lost
Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch and all seven crew members died.
Douglas Engelbart is born
Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse, was born in Portland, Oregon.
Explorer 1 reaches orbit
The first American satellite launched from Cape Canaveral and found the Van Allen radiation belts.
February
Luna 9 lands on the Moon
The Soviet probe made the first soft landing on the Moon and sent back photos.
Ken Thompson is born
Ken Thompson, co-creator of the Unix operating system, was born in New Orleans.
Facebook launches
Mark Zuckerberg launched the site from his Harvard dormitory as "Thefacebook."
Nolan Bushnell is born
Bushnell founded Atari.
Apollo 14 lands on the Moon
Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell landed in the Fra Mauro highlands.
The first untethered spacewalk
Bruce McCandless flew free of the Space Shuttle Challenger using a jet backpack.
Deep Blue wins a game against Garry Kasparov
IBM's chess computer won the first game of a match against the world champion. It was the first time a computer beat a reigning champion under tournament rules.
ENIAC is shown to the public
The US Army and the University of Pennsylvania unveiled ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic computers.
Voyager 1 takes the Pale Blue Dot photo
From about 6 billion kilometers away, Voyager 1 photographed Earth as a tiny point of light.
ENIAC is dedicated
The Army and the University of Pennsylvania presented ENIAC to the public a day after the first showing.
Watson wins Jeopardy!
IBM's Watson finished a three-day match against two former champions with a clear win.
Thomas J. Watson Sr. is born
Watson built IBM into a leading business machine company.
John Glenn orbits the Earth
Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, aboard Friendship 7.
Python is released
Guido van Rossum published the first public version of the Python programming language.
The Legend of Zelda is released
Nintendo released the first Zelda game in Japan on the Famicom Disk System.
Steve Jobs is born
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, was born in San Francisco.
Pokémon is released in Japan
Pokémon Red and Green launched for the Game Boy.
Herman Hollerith is born
Herman Hollerith, who built the punched-card tabulating machine for the 1890 census, was born in Buffalo, New York.
The Raspberry Pi goes on sale
The Raspberry Pi Foundation began selling a credit-card-sized computer for about $35.
March
Apollo 9 launches
Apollo 9 tested the lunar module in Earth orbit.
The museum becomes the Mimms Museum of Technology and Art
The Roswell museum took its new name and opened a gallery of Salvador Dali prints.
Alexander Graham Bell receives his telephone patent
The patent covered a method of sending speech by electrical signals.
Betty Holberton is born
Holberton was one of the six original ENIAC programmers.
Ralph Baer is born
Ralph Baer, whose "Brown Box" led to the Magnavox Odyssey, was born in Germany.
AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol in game one
Google DeepMind's AlphaGo won the first game of a five-game Go match against a world top player.
The first telephone call
Bell spoke to his assistant Thomas Watson over the new device.
Palm launches the PalmPilot
The PalmPilot Personal and Professional went on sale.
Tim Berners-Lee proposes the Web
He wrote "Information Management: A Proposal" at CERN, which grew into the World Wide Web.
Linux 1.0 is released
Linus Torvalds released the first full version of the Linux kernel.
The first .com name is registered
Symbolics, the maker of Lisp machines, registered symbolics.com.
Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket
Goddard's rocket flew 12.5 meters from a field in Auburn, Massachusetts.
Vanguard 1 launches
The small solar-powered satellite is the oldest human-made object still in orbit.
Alexei Leonov makes the first spacewalk
The Soviet cosmonaut left Voskhod 2 for about 12 minutes.
The first tweet
Jack Dorsey sent the first message on Twitter.
DEC introduces the PDP-8
DEC priced the 12-bit PDP-8 at $18,500, the first computer under $20,000.
Intel ships the Pentium
Intel began shipping the Pentium processor.
Jean Sammet is born
Jean Sammet, a designer of COBOL, was born in New York City.
Queen Elizabeth II sends an email
The Queen sent a message from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment over the ARPANET.
UNIVAC I is delivered to the Census Bureau
The first UNIVAC went to the United States Census Bureau.
April
TIROS-1 launches
TIROS-1 was the first weather satellite to send back television pictures.
Apple is founded
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne started Apple Computer. The company then sold the Apple I.
Gmail launches
Google announced Gmail with one gigabyte of free storage.
The first mobile phone call
Martin Cooper of Motorola called a rival at Bell Labs from a handheld phone on a New York street.
The Osborne 1 is shown
Adam Osborne showed the first portable computer at the West Coast Computer Faire.
Microsoft is founded
Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in Albuquerque to write software for the Altair.
Robert Metcalfe is born
Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, was born in Brooklyn.
IBM announces System/360
IBM announced a family of computers that all ran the same software. It changed how businesses bought computers.
RFC 1 is published
Steve Crocker published the first Request for Comments, a memo about the ARPANET host software.
Mary Jackson is born
Jackson became NASA's first Black female engineer.
Apollo 13 launches
Apollo 13 left for the Moon. An oxygen tank failed two days later and the crew returned safely.
Yuri Gagarin orbits the Earth
The Soviet cosmonaut became the first person in space.
The first Space Shuttle launches
Columbia lifted off on STS-1, the first flight of the Space Shuttle.
The Apple II debuts
Apple showed the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.
Fred Brooks is born
Brooks managed the IBM System/360 project and wrote The Mythical Man-Month.
Gordon Moore publishes his law
Moore wrote that the number of parts on a chip would keep doubling at a steady pace.
Apollo 16 lands on the Moon
John Young and Charles Duke landed in the Descartes highlands. It was April 20 in Houston.
Mosaic 1.0 is released
The NCSA released the Mosaic browser, which brought pictures to the Web for many users.
Ray Tomlinson is born
Tomlinson picked the @ sign for email addresses.
The ZX Spectrum goes on sale
Sinclair's rubber-keyed home computer first went on sale in Britain.
The first YouTube video
Jawed Karim posted "Me at the zoo," the first video on YouTube.
The Hubble Space Telescope launches
Space Shuttle Discovery carried Hubble into orbit.
Xerox introduces the Star
Xerox announced the Star workstation with windows, icons and a mouse.
Apple opens the iTunes Store
Apple began selling songs for 99 cents each.
Claude Shannon is born
Shannon founded information theory.
CERN puts the Web in the public domain
CERN released the Web software for anyone to use at no charge.
May
BASIC runs for the first time
John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz ran the first BASIC programs at Dartmouth College.
Alan Shepard flies into space
Shepard became the first American in space on Freedom 7.
EDSAC runs its first program
The Cambridge machine ran a program that printed a list of square numbers.
EDSAC runs its first programs
Cambridge's EDSAC calculated a table of square numbers and a list of prime numbers.
Apple announces the iMac
Steve Jobs announced the colorful iMac. It went on sale on August 15, 1998.
Edsger Dijkstra is born
Dijkstra developed a well-known shortest-path method.
Deep Blue beats Kasparov
IBM's Deep Blue won a six-game match against world champion Garry Kasparov.
Konrad Zuse shows the Z3
Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, an electromechanical programmable computer, in Berlin.
Skylab launches
NASA launched its first space station on the last Saturn V flight.
Ivan Sutherland is born
Sutherland built Sketchpad, an early graphics program.
Alan Kay is born
Kay led work on the Smalltalk language at Xerox PARC.
Apollo 10 launches
Apollo 10 flew a full rehearsal of the Moon landing without landing.
Metcalfe writes the Ethernet memo
Bob Metcalfe wrote a memo at Xerox PARC describing a network that became Ethernet.
Pac-Man is released in Japan
Namco released the arcade game that became the best-known video game character.
Pac-Man debuts in Japan
Namco released Pac-Man in Japan. It later earned over $14 billion.
Sun announces Java
Sun Microsystems announced the Java language at the SunWorld conference.
Samuel Morse sends "What hath God wrought"
Morse sent the message over a telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore.
Kennedy sets a goal to reach the Moon
President John F. Kennedy told Congress the United States should land a person on the Moon before the decade ended.
Apple announces the Newton
John Sculley introduced the Newton at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Apple introduces the Newton
Apple introduced the Newton, a handheld assistant and the first device with handwriting recognition. Shipments began in August 1993.
June
The first Colossus Mark 2 runs
The faster Mark 2 codebreaking computer ran successfully, days before the Normandy landings.
Napster launches
Shawn Fanning's file-sharing service began.
Tetris is first played
Alexey Pajitnov finished the first playable version in Moscow.
World IPv6 Launch
Major websites and network providers turned on IPv6 for good.
Alan Turing dies
Turing died at his home in Wilmslow, England, at age 41.
Tim Berners-Lee is born
Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, was born in London.
Intel introduces the 8086
Intel released the 16-bit processor whose design led to the x86 line used in PCs.
IBM unveils Summit
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and IBM unveiled Summit, then the fastest supercomputer in the world.
The Apple II goes on sale
Apple began selling the Apple II in the United States.
Leonard Kleinrock is born
Kleinrock's lab at UCLA sent the first ARPANET message.
Babbage describes his Difference Engine
Charles Babbage read a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society on a machine to calculate tables.
Valentina Tereshkova flies into space
She became the first woman in space.
Blaise Pascal is born
Pascal built one of the first mechanical calculators as a teenager.
The Manchester Baby runs its first program
The Small-Scale Experimental Machine in Manchester ran the first program stored in electronic memory.
Konrad Zuse is born
Zuse built the Z3 in Berlin.
Alan Turing is born
Alan Turing was born in London. He helped break Enigma messages during World War II.
Vint Cerf is born
Cerf co-designed TCP/IP.
Nintendo 64 launches in Japan
Nintendo released its 64-bit console, the first with a standard thumbstick controller.
The first barcode scan
A pack of chewing gum was the first item scanned with a UPC barcode, at a store in Troy, Ohio.
The iPhone goes on sale
Buyers lined up outside stores for the first iPhone.
July
Jeff Bezos founds Amazon
Bezos started the company in Bellevue, Washington, as an online bookstore.
Joseph Marie Jacquard is born
Jacquard, inventor of the punched-card loom, was born in Lyon.
Telstar 1 launches
The first communications satellite to carry live television launched.
The App Store opens
Apple opened its App Store with the iPhone 3G.
Mariner 4 flies past Mars
Mariner 4 sent back the first close photos of another planet.
Nintendo releases the Famicom in Japan
The 8-bit console went on sale in Japan. It became the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States.
Apollo 11 launches
Apollo 11 left Cape Kennedy with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins aboard.
Apollo and Soyuz dock
An American and a Soviet spacecraft linked up in orbit.
Apollo 11 lands on the Moon
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle. Armstrong stepped onto the surface hours later.
Viking 1 lands on Mars
Viking 1 made the first successful landing on Mars and sent pictures.
The Computer Museum of America opens in Roswell
The museum opened on the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. It later became the Mimms Museum of Technology and Art.
Commodore introduces the Amiga 1000
Commodore launched the Amiga at a gala in New York with Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry.
NASA is established
President Eisenhower signed the law that created the space agency.
Apollo 15 lands on the Moon
Apollo 15 landed near Hadley Rille. It was the first mission to carry a lunar rover.
August
Apple ships the Newton
Apple began selling the Newton MessagePad.
Radio Shack announces the TRS-80
Tandy announced the TRS-80 Model I at a press event in New York.
Frances Allen is born
Allen made key advances in compiler design at IBM.
The first website goes public
Tim Berners-Lee made the first website available outside CERN.
Harvard Mark I is dedicated
The Harvard Mark I, built with IBM, was dedicated at Harvard University.
Marvin Minsky is born
Minsky co-founded the MIT artificial intelligence laboratory.
Netscape goes public
The browser maker's stock offering started the dot-com boom.
Steve Wozniak is born
Steve Wozniak, designer of the Apple I and Apple II, was born in San Jose.
Echo 1 launches
NASA launched a giant balloon satellite that bounced radio signals.
IBM introduces the Personal Computer
IBM announced the IBM PC at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.
The iMac goes on sale
The Bondi blue iMac went on sale in the United States.
Margaret Hamilton is born
Hamilton led the team that wrote the flight software for the Apollo missions.
Google goes public
Google sold its first shares to the public.
Voyager 2 launches
Voyager 2 launched on a tour of the outer planets.
Windows 95 is released
Microsoft released Windows 95 with the Start menu.
Linus Torvalds announces Linux
He posted that he was making a free operating system as a hobby.
Katherine Johnson is born
Johnson calculated flight paths for NASA missions.
September
John McCarthy is born
McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence and created Lisp.
Google is founded
Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated Google in California.
Voyager 1 launches
Voyager 1 launched and later became the most distant human-made object.
Philo Farnsworth transmits a television image
The 21-year-old inventor sent an image of a straight line.
Dennis Ritchie is born
Ritchie created the C language and helped build Unix.
The first computer bug is taped into a log
Grace Hopper's team found a moth in a Harvard Mark II relay and taped it into the log.
The PlayStation arrives in North America
Sony's console reached North America after launching in Japan in December 1994.
PlayStation arrives in North America
The PlayStation reached North America nine months after its Japan launch.
Gunpei Yokoi is born
Yokoi designed the Game Boy for Nintendo.
Jack Kilby demonstrates the integrated circuit
Kilby showed a working chip at Texas Instruments.
IBM announces the RAMAC disk drive
The 305 RAMAC was the first computer with a hard disk drive.
Super Mario Bros. is released
Nintendo released Super Mario Bros. in Japan.
IBM announces the RAMAC
IBM announced the 305 RAMAC, the first commercial computer with a moving-head hard disk drive.
First Linux kernel released
Linus Torvalds released the first version of the Linux kernel.
The first smiley emoticon
Scott Fahlman proposed :-) in a message on a Carnegie Mellon bulletin board.
Dorothy Vaughan is born
Vaughan led the West Area Computers at NASA's Langley research center.
Mars Climate Orbiter is lost
A mix-up between metric and English units in software doomed the spacecraft.
The NES launches across the United States
Nintendo took the NES from test markets to a nationwide launch.
Seymour Cray is born
Seymour Cray was born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. He designed the Cray-1 supercomputer.
October
Sputnik 1 launches
The Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite.
IBM announces the 1401
IBM announced the 1401, a decimal computer meant to replace punched card machines. Over 12,000 were produced.
Steve Jobs dies
The Apple co-founder died at age 56.
Luna 3 photographs the far side of the Moon
The Soviet probe sent the first images of the side that never faces Earth.
Apollo 7 launches
Apollo 7 was the first crewed flight of the Apollo program.
Steve Jobs unveils the NeXT Computer
Jobs showed the NeXT Computer in San Francisco. Tim Berners-Lee later built the first web server on a NeXT machine.
Cassini launches
Cassini left for Saturn and stayed there for 13 years.
VisiCalc goes on sale
VisiCorp released VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet for personal computers, for the Apple II.
The NES reaches United States test markets
Nintendo began selling the NES in test markets after the 1983 video game crash.
Chester Carlson makes the first xerographic copy
Carlson made the first copy using the process later called xerography.
Apple announces the iPod
Apple announced the iPod, a music player that held 1,000 songs.
DEC introduces the VAX-11/780
DEC showed its first 32-bit VAX computer at its annual shareholders meeting.
Windows XP is released
Microsoft released Windows XP to computer makers.
Bill Gates is born
Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, was born in Seattle.
The first ARPANET message is sent
A computer at UCLA sent the first message over ARPANET to a computer at Stanford Research Institute.
The Bitcoin paper is published
Satoshi Nakamoto posted the Bitcoin white paper to a mailing list.
November
The Morris worm spreads
The first widely spread Internet worm slowed a large part of the network.
Laika flies on Sputnik 2
The dog Laika became the first animal to orbit the Earth.
Barbara Liskov is born
Liskov won the Turing Award for work on programming languages and systems.
Jack Kilby is born
Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit, was born in Jefferson City, Missouri.
Hedy Lamarr is born
Lamarr co-invented a frequency-hopping method for radio.
Apollo 4 launches
The first flight of the Saturn V rocket.
The iPod goes on sale
Apple began selling the first iPod.
The World Wide Web proposal is formalized
Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau published a proposal for a hypertext project.
Apollo 12 launches
Apollo 12 launched through a thunderstorm, and lightning struck the rocket twice.
Intel announces the 4004
Intel advertised the 4004, the first microprocessor sold as a single chip.
Gene Amdahl is born
Amdahl was the chief architect of the IBM System/360 line.
Shigeru Miyamoto is born
Miyamoto created Mario and Zelda.
The Arecibo message is sent
Astronomers beamed a radio message toward a star cluster.
Engelbart receives the mouse patent
The United States granted Douglas Engelbart a patent for an "X-Y position indicator."
Apollo 12 lands on the Moon
Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 probe.
Windows 1.0 is released
Microsoft shipped the first version of Windows.
Super Famicom launches in Japan
Nintendo released its 16-bit console, sold in North America as the Super NES in 1991.
Tamagotchi goes on sale in Japan
Bandai released the Tamagotchi, a handheld digital pet.
Dreamcast launches in Japan
Sega released the Dreamcast, the first console with a built-in modem.
Atari releases Pong
Atari put Pong in arcades and launched the video game business.
ChatGPT is released
OpenAI released a chatbot that reached millions of users in weeks.
December
The first text message
Neil Papworth sent "Merry Christmas" to a phone on the Vodafone network.
The PlayStation goes on sale in Japan
Sony released its first game console.
PlayStation launches in Japan
Sony Computer Entertainment released the PlayStation in Japan. It put 3D polygon graphics first.
Satoru Iwata is born
Iwata led Nintendo as president.
Apollo 17 launches
Apollo 17 became the last crewed mission to the Moon so far, and the only night launch of the Apollo program.
Colossus runs
Colossus began work at Bletchley Park.
Grace Hopper is born
Hopper helped create COBOL and rose to rear admiral in the Navy.
Engelbart shows the mouse
Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the mouse, hypertext and video conferencing in San Francisco.
Ada Lovelace is born
Ada Lovelace was born in London. She wrote notes on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.
Doom is released
id Software released Doom as shareware over the Internet.
Apollo 17 lands on the Moon
Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed in the Taurus-Littrow valley.
Robert Noyce is born
Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit and co-founder of Intel, was born in Burlington, Iowa.
Apple goes public
Apple's stock offering made it one of the most valuable first offerings to that date.
Radia Perlman is born
Perlman invented the spanning tree protocol that keeps Ethernet networks from looping.
Larry Roberts is born
Roberts managed the ARPANET design at ARPA.
An air raid destroys the original Zuse Z3
An Allied bombardment of Berlin destroyed Konrad Zuse's relay computer. A replica was built in 1961.
Apollo 8 launches
Apollo 8 carried the first crew to orbit the Moon.
Bob Kahn is born
Kahn co-designed TCP/IP.
The transistor is demonstrated
John Bardeen and Walter Brattain demonstrated the first working transistor at Bell Labs.
Charles Babbage is born
Babbage designed the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine.
Jean Bartik is born
Bartik was one of the original ENIAC programmers.
John von Neumann is born
Von Neumann described the stored-program computer design used today.
Linus Torvalds is born
Torvalds created the Linux kernel.