Feb. 14Th Same Lab As Meucci

in 1849, and Bell later stationery, matches, scratch conducted experiments in the pads all bear the inscription, Feb. 14th same lab as Meucci. THINK. A monthly magazine called Think is distributed to the On June 11, 2002, the US employees.” Congress naming Meucci as the Bell vs. Gray inventor of the telephone, but IBM became a highly-effective Feb. 14, 1876 many engineers disagree. One organization, based largely remarked, “Meucci’s telephone around punched card tabulating Prev: [June 2] Next: [March 7] was more like two tin cans and a machines [July 20]. For instance, thread.” Watson’s technique of leasing Separate patents for the machines and supplying services telephone were filed on this day was a much more profitable by Alexander Graham Bell and approach than selling the Elisha Gray [Aug 2], setting the The Birth of IBM hardware outright. stage for the controversy over who actually invented the Feb. 14, 1924 By 1952, IBM owned and leased device. Indeed, it's probably the more than 90 percent of all Thomas J. Watson [Feb 17] single most litigated fact in US tabulating machines in the US. decided to rename the history, with Bell's patents Unfortunately this success Computing-Tabulating- having been defended in over triggered an antitrust suit by the Recording Company (C-T-R 600 cases. Department of Justice on [Jan [June 16]), and submitted an 21]. It's true that Bell’s lawyer had application to list his paperwork filed first – the "International application was the fifth Business Machines" on received by the patent office that the New York Stock day, while Gray’s was the 39th. Exchange using the But those numbers are initials IBM. He’d misleading, since Bell's papers never liked the clumsy was handed in directly while hyphenated C-T-R. Gray left his application in an in- Watson had joined the basket. Nevertheless, it was company as General enough, and Bell was awarded Manager on May 1 US patent 174465, on [March 7], 1914, after leaving 1876. National Cash Register (NCR); he A Path to Thinking at IBM Another unsettling aspect of the was promoted to president just Poughkeepsie. Photo by Agiorgio. story was that Gray had kept his 11 months later. CC BY-SA 4.0 invention a secret until the The IBM name came about preceding Friday, Feb. 11. because Watson was looking for Watson's devotion to punched Rumor has it that it was only a way to 'improve' on NCR: cards meant that it wasn’t until when Bell heard of Gray’s work “International” was better than his son, Thomas Watson, Jr. [Jan on that day, that he hurriedly “National”, and “Business 14], became IBM president in prepared his patent application. Machines” was way more 1952, that the company really The rushed nature of the sophisticated than “Cash poured its energies into the paperwork is sometimes Register”. computer field. For example, 'proved' by the way that Bell Watson Sr. had turned down a scribbled an addition in the Watson's business acumen led chance to buy Eckert-Mauchly margin. to rapid improvements at IBM. Computer Corporation [Oct 25] He implemented generous sales in 1949. Admittedly, this Some ten years later (1886), a incentives, an insistence on well- decision may have been patent examiner, Zenas Wilber, groomed, dark-suited salesmen influenced by his bad experience signed a sworn affidavit that Bell [Feb 4], and an almost working with Howard Aiken had paid him a bribe in March evangelical fervor for company [March 8] on the Automatic 1876 to look at the details of pride and loyalty [May 4], [May Sequence Controlled Calculator Gray’s application. This 29]. (ASCC) [Aug 7] in 1944. supposedly gave Bell the necessary hints to convert his Of course, he popularized the On the bright side, this falling vague ideas into a working “THINK” slogan, that he’d out with Aiken meant that IBM system. However, Wilber’s actually coined while at NCR. A decided to focus its funding on claims were dismissed at the biographical article in 1940 Columbia, and Wallace Eckert’s time. noted that “This word is on the [June 19] lab was transformed most conspicuous wall of every into the Watson Scientific Adding to the confusion is that room in every IBM building. Computing Lab [Feb 6]. Several Italian inventor Antonio Meucci Each employee carries a THINK historic computers were began developing a “telegrafo notebook in which to record designed and/or built there parlante” (a talking telegraph), inspirations. The company while Watson Sr. was in charge,

including the SSEC ([Jan 27] accomplished it in a sprightly The company became the largest 1948), and the IBM 604 ([June third of a second. supplier of PCs during the 00] 1948). 1990's [Jan 28], even though the In more recent times, various founders had initially iconic computers have been considered starting a chain of compared using the Dhrystone Mexican restaurants instead. Reverend Apple 2.1 benchmark, developed by Reinhold P. Weicker, to calculate The first Compaq PC was Feb. 14, 1981 their MIPS (millions of sketched out on a instructions executed per placemat/napkin by Canion “Reverend Apple”, an Apple II second) score: while dining with the other program, performed its first founders at the “House of Pies” marriage today, on Valentine’s  The ENIAC: 0.0029 (obtained in Houston. Their idea was to Day. using a simulator; reverse-engineer the IBM PC The computer displayed the text  MITS Altair [Dec 19]: 0.01; [Aug 12] to produce a 100% of the wedding vows, and compatible machine that was vocalized the usual questions.  Apple II [April 15] 0.02; considerably cheaper. However, instead of answering  Commodore 64 [Jan 7]: 0.02; To get around IBM’s ownership “I do” , the bride and groom had of the machine's BIOS [July 10], to type in “Y”. If either of them  Atari 800XL [Nov 00]: 0.165; they hired engineers with no entered “N” then the machine knowledge of that code, put beeped, told them to try again,  Raspberry Pi 2 [Feb 29]: 9700. them in a “clean room”, and had and repeated the question Most of the surviving ENIAC them come up with a BIOS of (hopefully not thereby entering hardware is on display at the their own. This was expensive an infinite loop). Smithsonian in Washington DC. (costing an estimated $1 The software was written by Several panels are also on show million), but legal. The resulting M.E. Cavanaugh at the request of at the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Compaq Portable [Nov 4] was a the Rev. Ron Jaenisch, who stood Paderborn, Germany, and at the massive hit. in attendance with “Reverend Moore School [Aug 7]. In 1987, Murto resigned to join a Apple” while the ceremony was ENIAC's 50th anniversary [six religious education program at being performed/executed. entries on] was also incorrectly the University of St. Thomas celebrated on this day. Officially, the computer was only Jaenisch’s assistant, but Jaenisch's main role was to start First Online a wedding service by pushing a Compaq ‘RUN WED’ button. Rev. Jaenisch was known as the “Archbishop Feb. 14, 1982 Wedding in Charge of Keyboarding”. Compaq (a portmanteau word Feb. 14, 1983 During its ﬁrst eight months, based on Compatibility And George Mike Stickel, aged 29, “Reverend Apple” Quality) was founded in 1982 by and Debbie Fuhrman, 23, disappointingly only performed Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill exchanged wedding vows in six marriages. Jaenisch Murto— all former Texas Grand Praire, Texas via explained, “It’s not easy to Instruments managers [Oct 1]. CompuServe’s CB Simulator convince people to get married chat program [Feb 21]. by a computer. They don’t think it’s romantic.” Sixty-six wedding guests from across the country attended the event online, including the bride’s parents at home in Don’t Trash the Phoenix, Arizona, while her sister was present via hardware ENIAC lent out by a RadioShack [Feb 2] Feb. 14, 1981 store in Sacramento, California. They were frequenting a private For ENIAC’s 35th birthday [Feb CB channel accessible with the 15], the wily old-timer was password “Lovein.” pitted against a state-of-the-art Reverend Kim Payton, a RadioShack TRS-80 Model 1 Universalist minister, stood at [Aug 3] in a colossal battle to one terminal, while Debbie and square all the integers from 1 to Rod Canion (2016). Photo Mike stood across from him at 10,000. The graybearded ENIAC by Frank Schramm. CC BY their own input device, tastefully managed it in six seconds, but 2.0. decorated for the occasion with the TRS-80 (aka the “Trash-80″) two white ceramic swans.

Upon receiving the question, “Do design was inspired by the UK you, Debbie, take Mike to be Lemmings children's book "The Wombles", your lawful husband?”, Debbie Feb. 14, 1991 by Elizabeth Beresford. typed in “I will” and the screen flashed “(((((((KISS)))))))”and a Lemmings is a puzzle game shower of periods, commas and developed by Russell Kay, Mike asterisks rained down to Dailly, and David Jones at DMA Project Star Trek represent rice; overcome by Design in Dundee, Scotland for emotion, the bride’s mother the Amiga [July 23]. The game Begins typed in “Sniff.” A complete was inspired by a 8x8 pixel Feb. 14, 1992 transcript of the happy event animation that Dailly created was printed in InfoWorld while experimenting with “Star Trek” [Sept 8] was the magazine on March 14. Deluxe Paint, the de facto art name of a top-secret project by package for the Amiga. Apple and Novell [June 19] to “We met through a computer,” port the Mac OS to Intel x86 PCs said Stickel later, “and we dated The objective is to guide a group by running the OS as a shell on through a computer, so it was of human-like lemmings through top of Novell’s DOS. This wasn't just the next step to be married a number of obstacles on each quite as crazy as it sounded by a computer. What could be game level so that enough of since MS Windows 3.1 [April 6] more logical?” them reach the exit. This is done employed MS-DOS in a similar by assigning skills to specific The first “Virtual Reality” way. Indeed, the development lemmings – the Climber, the wedding occurred some ten reached a point where System Floater, the Bomber, the Blocker, years later, on [Aug 20] 1994 7.1 [May 13] could boot on an the Builder, the Basher, the Intel 486 PC, but only with very

Miner, and the Digger. These specific hardware. allow a lemming to modify the Lotus Symphony landscape (e.g. build a bridge, The project's tagline (almost dig a hole), or change the inevitably given its name) was Introduced behavior of other lemmings. “to boldly go where no Mac has gone before.” However, Feb. 14 1984 ComputerWorld magazine mocked it as “the OS that boldly Lotus Symphony was an goes where everyone else has integrated MS-DOS package been”. [Aug 12] for creating and editing text, spreadsheets, charts, “Star Trek” never quite reached databases, and sending e-mail. It warp speed before John Sculley’s was released as a follow-up to [April 6] reign at Apple came to Lotus' ubiquitous spreadsheet an end. The new CEO, Michael program, Lotus 1-2-3 [Jan 26]. Spindler, had little interest in porting the Mac OS to the x86, Lotus 1-2-3 had originally also preferring to prepare System 7 been billed as an integrated Lemmings crossing a bridge and for the PowerPC [March 14]. The product with spreadsheet, tunnelling through a boulder. Screenshot of the Amiga version project was canceled in 1993, database, and graphing (hence although various bits-and-pieces the name “1-2-3”). But other of the game. popped up in other projects, “integrated” products, such as notably in Novell DOS 7. Ashton-Tate’s Framework [Aug The levels were grouped into 00], included more stuff, such as four categories on most word processing; Symphony was platforms: Fun, Tricky, Taxing, Lotus’ response. and Mayhem, while a two-player Delphi Released option took advantage of the Lotus Jazz [Nov 12] was a sibling Amiga's ability to support two Feb. 14, 1995 product for the Mac which mice simultaneously. proved less of a success. Clearly Delphi evolved from Borland’s more people like symphonic Sales topped 55,000 copies Turbo Pascal [Nov 20], which music than jazz. when the game was released on was hardly surprising since the this day, and an estimated 15 chief architect of both was In 1992, Symphony was million copies of all the ports Anders Hejlsberg [Dec 2]. Delphi replaced by Lotus SmartSuite, were sold between 1991 and is essentially Pascal [Feb 15] but in 2007, after Lotus had 2006. with object oriented extensions. been bought by IBM [July 6], the Symphony name was In the box cover art, the Delphi's excellent programming resurrected, attached to lemmings are carrying a sign environment included a code integrated software for MS that says the game is not editor, a visual designer, an Windows. responsible for players' loss of integrated debugger, a source code control component, and sanity, hair, nor sleep. The "droopy-nosed" lemmings support for third-party plugins.

A Delphi project of a million By the late 1990’s, UNIX-related 2021 was, of course, ENIAC's lines could easily compile in a interest had begun to shift and 75th anniversary, and videos few seconds, and the generated coalesce around “GNU/Linux.” It from "ENIAC Day" can be found binary code was small. was an appealing mix since GNU online at [Sept 27] had been written from https://www.youtube.com/ Delphi was originally one of scratch to avoid copyright hashtag/eniacday many codenames used in the issues, and Linux [March 14] project, and probably a was open source and broadly reference to the classical Greek compatibility with POSIX. oracle at Delphi. Delphi YouTube Launched supported database connectivity In the PC domain at least, 9:13pm including links to Oracle GNU/Linux seems to have won, Feb. 14, 2005; databases, so Danny Thorpe although there are many, many YouTube was founded by Chad suggested: “if you want to talk to “distributions” to choose from, Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed the Oracle, go to Delphi”. such as [May 00], [July 17], [Sept Karim, all early employees of 15], [Aug 11], [Dec 22], [Oct 20], PayPal [Feb 15]. Their first [April 15], and [Feb 19]. headquarters were above a pizzeria (Amigi’s) and Japanese UNIX Wars restaurant (Hi-Mo) in San Mateo, Feb. 14, 1996 ENIAC is 50 California. "The UNIX Wars" was the Feb. 14, 1996 Karim has said that the exciting name for the attempts inspiration for the company by several UNIX vendors to The ENIAC that was unveiled came from two incidents: Janet develop a standard for the OS. (almost) 50 years ago [Feb 15], Jackson’s dress malfunction was turned off [Oct 2] in 1955, during her 2004 Super Bowl In the late 1980's and early and stored at the Smithsonian. It performance, and the 2004 1990's, there were numerous was switched back on today by Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim UNIX implementations floating Vice President Al Gore [Dec 9] in couldn’t easily find video clips of about, typically based on System a ceremony at the University of either online, which led to the V [Oct 15], BSD [March 9], or Pennsylvania’s Moore School of idea of a video sharing site. some combination of the two, Engineering. Not only did Hurley and Chen have said that and several efforts had been various panels light up, but the the original idea was for a video- made to develop open machine was able to do some based dating service, similar to specifications and standards calculations – two rows of lights “Am I Hot or Not?” [Oct 9] based on them. These included indicated that it was able to the European group of The first YouTube video, “Me at count up to 46, and this feat was companies called X/Open the zoo”, was about Karim’s visit later surpassed by having it (1984), and the IEEE POSIX to the San Diego Zoo. It was count to 96. group ([?? 1988]). POSIX was uploaded on [April 23], 2005. designed to be readily Herman Goldstine [Sept 13], one In Nov. 2006, Google bought the implemented on both BSD and of the last surviving members of company for $1.65 billion in System V platforms. the original team, remarked stock, making it Google’s “ENIAC bears about as much In 1987, AT&T entered into an second-largest acquisition at the resemblance to a modern alliance with Sun Microsystems, time. As of May 2019, more than computer as dinosaurs do to 500 hours of content were resulting in SVR4 (System V humans. It’s absolutely Release 4.0) in 1988. The uploaded to YouTube each incredible. Nothing is believable response was for several other minute. when you look inside a vendors to form a competing computer today. It’s like I was in YouTube has featured an April group called the Open System a different world.” Fools prank every year since Foundation (OSF) to develop 2008. That year, all the video their own UNIX. Other events scheduled to links on the main page celebrate ENIAC’s birthday On [June 14] 1993, a lot of the redirected to Rick Astley’s music included the release of a fight went out of the combatants video “Never Gonna Give You commemorative “Computer when AT&T left the computer Up”, a prank known as Technology” stamp [Oct 8] and business, and sold System V to “Rickrolling” [July 27]. the first Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Novell. Novell later handed over Blue chess tournament [Feb 10]. the UNIX trademark and System V's source code to X/Open. The University of Pennsylvania also sponsored a project led by J. Computer On this day in 1996, OSF and Van der Spiegel called, “ENIAC- X/Open merged to become "The Engineer Barbie on-a-Chip”, which built a chip Open Group, which still with the same functionality as Feb. 14-17, 2010 promotes" open system the entire ENIAC. standards to this day. Mattel unveiled the 126th career in its “Barbie I Can Be” series –

“Computer Engineer Barbie” – at duo also found time to fix her The company now markets the 2010 American International computer virus problem. The Watson’s DeepQA software to Toy Fair in NYC. book was later withdrawn. large corporations in fields such as telecommunications and Mattel had left the decision to We should also forget 1992, financial services. the public, by running an online when the blond bombshell was poll, and asking for suggestions made to say, “Math class is on Facebook and Twitter. Half a tough.” million votes were cast, and “Computer Engineer” became the first career selected by popular vote. Humans in Jeopardy Feb. 14, 2011 IBM Watson was specifically built to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy! It was developed in IBM’s DeepQA project by a team led by David Ferrucci, and named after Thomas J. Watson Sr. [Feb 17]. The system ran on Linux using the Apache Hadoop [July 13] framework to support distributed computing, which handled the access to 200 million pages of content, including the full text of Wikipedia [Jan 15]. However, Computer Engineer Barbie. Watson wasn't connected to the Photo (c) Mattel. Internet during the game. IBM stated that, “more than 100 In order to make Barbie look different techniques are used to authentic, Mattel worked with analyze natural language, the Society of Women Engineers identify sources, find and and the National Academy of generate hypotheses, find and Engineers to design her score evidence, and merge and wardrobe. She ended up dressed rank hypotheses.” However, in a binary code patterned t- Watson still had trouble in a few shirt (it spelt out “Barbie”), with question categories, notably accessories including a those having short clues smartphone, Bluetooth headset, containing only a few words. and a laptop travel bag. She had a dual monitor set-up for her Originally Watson signaled pink laptop that ran Linux electronically to give an answer, (although she later switched to but Jeopardy! show staff Barbie OS). requested that it press a button physically, just as the human Various female engineers contestants did. Even with a suggested that for authenticity robotic “finger”, Watson was she needed “a Coke can and a faster than the puny human bag of Doritos” on her desk, but players, despite that its she only received a coffee cup. programming prevented it from Mattel rather spoiled matters a using the popular tactic of few years later when the buzzing before it was sure of an company had to apologize for answer. the book, “I Can Be a Computer On this day, Watson competed Engineer” (2013). There were against two former Jeopardy! complaints that it represented champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Barbie as incompetent, since she Jennings, and won the first place required the help of two men prize of $1 million. (Steven and Brian) to program the game she had designed. The