Newman founded the Computer worldwide supplier of CRT- lab at Manchester in July 1946 based word processing systems. Feb. 7th with the help of a grant from the To employees, Wang was known Royal Society, and persuaded as “The Doctor” [Nov 23]. Freddie Williams [June 26] and On July 3, 1986, he became one Tom Kilburn [Aug 11] to join Maxwell (Max) of twelve naturalized US citizens him. In Oct. 1948, Turing also accepted Newman’s invitation, to receive a Medal of Liberty Herman Alexander from President Ronald Reagan becoming Deputy Director to commemorate the unveiling Newman (although there was no of a restored Statue of Liberty. Director). Turing contributed to Bob Hope (UK) and Irving Berlin (Neumann) the Manchester Baby’s [June 21] (Russia) were among the other successor, the Mark I [June 16]. Born: Feb. 7, 1897; recipients. Chelsea, London In later years, Newman Died: Feb. 22, 1984 concentrated on enhancing the Department of Mathematics, Newman led the team that where he occupied the Fielden Nikolay Petrovich constructed the Colossus [Jan Chair of Pure Mathematics. 18; June 1] during WWII, and Brusentsov later established computing as a When Turing was prosecuted in discipline at the University of 1952, Newman appeared as one Born: Feb. 7, 1925; Manchester. of his character witnesses. Kamenskoe, Ukrainian Died: Dec. 4, 2014 His spring 1935 lectures at Cambridge on the foundations of Brusentsov and Sergei Sobolev mathematics inspired Alan An Wang built the first (and perhaps only) Turing [June 23] to consider the ternary-number based Entscheidungsproblem (decision or Wáng Ān computer, the Setun, at the problem), and Newman later Moscow State University in arranged for Turing to visit Born: Feb. 7, 1920; 1958. It was named after the Alonzo Church [June 14] at Shanghai, China nearby Setun river. Died: March 24, 1990 Princeton. A ternary computer uses logic Newman's codebreaking section Wang made important with three possible values at Bletchley Park [Aug 15] , contributions to the instead of the more common based in the eponymous development of magnetic core binary. The number system Newmanry, included Donald memory, and later co-founded usually employs −1, 0, and 1, a Michie [Nov 11], Jack Good [Dec Wang Labs. 'balanced' notation which simplifies many math 9], and David Rees, and was He emigrated from China in operations. focused on cracking the Lorenz 1945, becoming a US citizen in cipher. It became home to a 1954. In the spring of 1948, Aside from the logic, Setun was a range of mechanical devices to Howard Aiken [March 8] hired modern design, utilizing help with this endeavor, Wang to work on magnetic magnetic cores and diodes including the Heath Robinson storage devices at the Harvard rather than vacuum tubes and [June 1] and ten Colossus Computation Lab. The result was drum storage. It found favor, and computers designed by Tommy core memory in 1949, but the State Commission Flowers [Dec 22]. Harvard was so uninterested, authorized its mass-production, that Wang filed a patent himself eventually funding the [Oct 21]. construction of nearly fifty, many of which were dispatched He left Harvard in 1951 to co- to higher education institutions found Wang Labs with G. Y. Chu, across the USSR. and sold the rights to his patent to IBM for $500,000 in order to During the 1960's, Brusentsov fund the company. It grew into a and Evgeny Andreevich successful calculator Zhogolev developed the Setun- manufacturer, and diversified 70, which used a non-traditional, into minicomputers in the early two-stack architecture. 1970's. One notable early calculator that Two of its popular products employed balanced ternary was were the Wang 2200 [May 00], constructed by English inventor Max Newman (1950). Photo one of the first desktop Thomas Fowler in 1840, entirely by Lyn Newman. CC BY-SA computers, and the Wang Word from wood. To compensate for 3.0. Processing System (WPS) [June the limited mechanical 00]. Indeed, by the end of the precision, the machine was large 1970's, Wang was the largest

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– 6 feet long, 3 feet deep, and a His research also includes work Gopher developers held foot high. on French hair coloring (2004), gatherings around the country, and rigorous methods for called GopherCons, and Gopher measuring celebrity status even acquired some geek cachet (2006). when MTV VJ Adam Curry [Aug Leslie B. Lamport 13] wore a Gopher t-shirt when Born: Feb. 7, 1941; he announced the network’s Gopher site. The White House New York City Mark Perry publicized its own Gopher site Lamport is known for his on the “Good Morning America” seminal work on concurrent and McCahill TV show. distributed systems, including Born: Feb. 7, 1956; The appearance of NCSA Mosaic the development of logical USA [Sept 28] in 1993 marked a clocks, the bakery algorithm, the turning point. Another reason Byzantine Generals problem, In 1989, McCahill led a team at for Gopher’s demise may have distributed snapshots, and the the University of Minnesota that been the University of Paxos consensus and developed POPmail, one of the Minnesota’s decision to start verification protocols. first popular GUI e-mail clients. The original version was a charging licensing fees for it in The bakery algorithm requires a Hypercard stack [Aug 11], but early 1993. Meanwhile Tim person to obtain a number when was later converted into a Berners-Lee placed his code and they join a system (e.g. enter a standalone application. protocols in the public domain bakery), which will be used to [April 30]. decide when they are served. In 1991, McCahill led another In the spring of 1994, Web The number is generated by team that developed the Gopher traffic overtook Gopher for the examining the numbers of protocol for distributing, finding, first time. For McCahill, Gopher's everyone already present, and and retrieving documents over decline was brought home creating a value that's higher. the Internet. Information could come from a variety of sources, when: “I saw a URL on the side Lamport was also the developer such as WAIS [Oct 22], FTP of a bus. That’s when I knew the servers, Archie [Sept 10], and Web was all about advertising. USENET [Jan 29]. Gopher was not good for advertising. I knew it would Unlike the later Web, it imposed start winding down.” an hierarchical organization on the data and relied on a text- McCahill may also have been based menu interface (that was responsible for coining the well-suited to the computer phrase “Surfing the Internet” terminals of the time). It became [Feb 25]. the de facto standard for Internet information systems in the early 1990's before the BIZMAC eventual domination of the Web. Feb. 7, 1956 The simplicity of the Gopher protocol was widely praised, In 1951, RCA was awarded a and McCahill commented Leslie Lamport. $4.5 million contract to build a himself that a Gopher client was data processing machine for the of the LaTeX document “the first Internet application my Military Assistance Program preparation system (1985), mom can use.” (MAP). The result was the which builds upon Donald The Gopher name was coined by BIZMAC, which was described in Knuth’s [Jan 10] TeX typesetting Farhad Anklesaria as a play on a paper presented at the joint system [March 30], and was the several meanings of ACM-AIEE-IRE western itself written in the TeX macro “gopher”. The University of computer conference in San language. It has been widely Minnesota’s mascot is a "Golden Francisco on this day. adopted in academia since it Gopher", a gofer is an assistant makes TeX a bit less daunting to BIZMAC was the largest ever use. LaTeX’s design was who ”goes for" things, and a vacuum tube computer, influenced by Brian Reid’s [Oct gopher burrows through the occupying some 20,000 square 6] Scribe system. ground to reach a desired feet of floor space, using up to location. 30,000 tubes, 70,000 diodes, When asked if LaTeX is hard to Many universities created 35,000 magnetic cores use, Lamport replied, “It’s easy Gopher servers to catalog their (equivalent to around 8K of to use—if you’re one of the 2% online resources, and this memory), and 180 tape stations. of the population who thinks prompted the development of The machine required 360 KW logically and can read an the Veronica search engine [Nov to operate, and the 15-ton air instruction manual.” 17] for finding documents.

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conditioning unit consumed 500 Processing Techniques Office and that the family's Internet KW. (IPTO [Nov 1]). would be cut off forthwith. Naturally, the system was ARPA was initially over- His mother responded by saying quickly surpassed by faster and shadowed by the founding of that if their access was affected, more reliable systems, including NASA on July 29. Indeed, she would take out an IBM’s 705 [April 29] as well as Aviation Week magazine advertisement in the San RCA’s own transistorized 501 dismissed it as “a dead cat Francisco Chronicle to show that: [Sept 4], although BIZMAC hanging in the fruit closet”. "Your security is so crappy, even stayed in service until 1962. an 11-year-old can break it". ARPA is best known for Instead, they settled on a supporting the ARPANET [July compromise punishment for the 29], but it's been responsible for boy: three days away from the many, many other significant Internet. computer developments, including: After the DNS caching alarm, Kaminsky took the stage at the  1962: The oN-Line System Black Hat Briefing that August, (NLS) & “The Mother of All to explain how disaster had been Demos” [Dec 9]; averted. Kaminsky, who  1964: Project MAC for typically wore a T-shirt, shorts personal computing [July 1]; and flip flops, appeared onstage in a suit his mother had bought  1973: TCP/IP [Sept 9]; for him. She had also requested BIZMAC. US Government. that he wear closed-toed shoes,  1983: The Strategic Computing so he complied by wearing roller Initiative (SCI [Oct 28]); One of BIZMAC engineers was skates. Arnold Meyer Spielberg, the  2004: The DARPA Grand After his talk, Kaminsky was father of film director Steven Challenge [March 13]; approached by a stranger. It was Spielberg [June 9, June 19, June the administrator who had 29]. Spielberg (senior) patented  2014: The SyNAPSE Chip [Aug kicked him off the Internet years an electronic library system for 7]. before. He thanked Kaminsky for searching magnetic tapes, and For some reason (perhaps his work, and also asked to be designed the GE-225 [May 00] carelessness), the organization's re-introduced to “the meanest with Charles “Chuck” Propster. name has repeatedly gained and mother he ever met.” In 1960, he traveled to Moscow lost a “D”: DARPA (March 1972), as part of a delegation of ARPA (February 1993), and Kaminsky also helped develop electrical engineers. The trip DARPA (March 1996). telemedicine tools for the coincided with the U-2 incident National Institutes of Health and that was the subject of the AMPATH, a health project led by Steven Spielberg's 2015 film Indiana University. “Bridge of Spies”. Daniel Kaminsky Born: Feb. 7, 1979; San Francisco Wozniak Crashes (D)ARPA Died: April 23, 2021 Feb. 7, 1981 Feb. 7 1958 Kaminsky was known among security experts for his work on Steve Wozniak’s [Aug 11] The Advanced Research Projects the DNS cache poisoning scare private plane crashed during Agency (ARPA) was created by [July 8], for showing that the take-off from Sky Park Airport Department of Defense Sony Rootkit [Oct 31] had near Santa Cruz. The plane, a Directive 5105.15, in response infected at least 568,000 turbocharged single-engine, six- to the Soviet's scarily successful computers, and for his talks at seat Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC, launch of Sputnik 1 on [Oct 4] the Black Hat Briefings, a stalled, bounced down the 1957. conference dedicated to runway, went through two fences, and crashed into an ARPA's mission was to ensure security. embankment. that US military technology When he was aged 11, his would always be more advanced mother received a call from a Wozniak's then-fiancé, her than the nation’s potential government security brother and his girlfriend enemies (i.e. the Soviet’s). administrator who told her that suffered only minor injuries, but Fortunately, its mandate was her son had intruded into the accident left Wozniak with wide enough to support non- military computers (to be exact, short-term memory loss for over military research. with many of he said someone was a month. He would later say that those computer-related projects “monkeying around in playing Apple II [June 5] games managed by the Information territories where he shouldn’t helped him regain his memory. be monkeying around”) [June 3],

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Wozniak didn’t immediately Also see [Jan 19, Dec 4], and the return to Apple. During his leave preceding entry. For links to all of absence, he tried his hand as a date/time related problems, see rock concert impresario [Sept 3]. [Jan 1]. Sky Park is now an actual park, but retains a 100-yard section of the old runway.

NTP Problem Feb. 7, 2036 The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is used for clock synchronization between systems, and is perhaps the oldest Internet protocol still in use, having become operational in 1985. It was first demoed at the June 1979 National Computer Conference (NCC), running over a transatlantic satellite network. It was designed by David L. Mills, who described it in the Internet Engineering Note (IEN) 173, published on Feb. 25, 1981. NTP has been improved several times over the years. It currently offers 64-bit timestamps consisting of a 32-bit part for seconds and 32-bits for a fraction of a second, which means that it will overflow after 232 seconds (136 years). Since NTP counts time from Jan. 1, 1900, the first rollover will occur at 06:28:16 UTC on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2036. Of course, future versions may extend the time representation to 128 bits, making the problem less pressing. For links to all date/time related problems, see [Jan 1].

UNIX Time Overflow #2 Feb. 7, 2106 At 06:28:15 UTC on this day, the 32-bit UNsigned integer versions of UNIX time [Jan 1] will exceed the largest value it can hold (4,294,967,295).The next second will rollover back to 00:00:00 Thursday, Jan. 1, 1970.

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