telegraph (“far writer”), as Heiser's “The Computer Store” coined by the French politician [July 15] was the very first, and Dec. 25th André François Miot de Mélito. the second was Paul Terrell’s "Byte Shop" [Dec 8]. In any case, The first telegraph line from Viet's rapidly became a hangout Paris to Lille was ready in July for NYC computer geeks. Claude Chappe 1794, consisting of 23 stations. Born: Dec. 25, 1763; The first official message was In 1977, Veit and Les Solomon sent on Aug. 15, concerning the co-authored one of the first Brûlon, Sarthe, France French army’s recapture of Le personal computing books, Died: Jan. 23, 1805 Quesnoy (about 200 km north of “Getting Involved With Your Chappe and his four brothers Paris) from Austria. The Own Computer,” although David developed a practical system of government received the good Ahl’s [May 17] “101 BASIC semaphore relay stations, that news just one hour after the Computer Games” (1973) was eventually spanned all of France. battle’s end and over ten hours probably the first. Their device used two metal before a courier on horse-back A letter from Veit criticizing the arms connected by a cross-arm. arrived. Thus the editorial content of Computer Each arm could be set in one of telecommunications era had Shopper [Nov 15] in 1983 led to seven positions, and the cross- begun. Hacking soon followed his being invited to become its arm offered four more, allowing (see [March 14]). first editor-in-chief . He quickly the system to support a 196- turned it into the physically combination code. largest magazine in the world. Fredrik Rosing Bull His 1993 book, “Stan Veit’s Born: Dec. 25, 1882; History of the Personal Oslo, Norway Computer”, is still a fun read. Died: June 7, 1925 Bull patented his first punched card machine on July 31, 1919, Richard Greenblatt and it soon became a success Born: Dec. 25, 1944; throughout Europe as it was Portland, Oregon considered technically superior to Hollerith's machine [Jan 8]. Greenblatt and Bill Gosper [April Over the following years, Bull 26] are considered the co- made several improvements to founders of the Lisp-and-AI automate and speed up the hacker community. Greenblatt device's processing. and Stewart Nelson were also the main implementers of the His patents became the basis for Incompatible Timesharing the French company, Groupe System (ITS [July 00]) in MIT's Bull, which has grown into an AI lab information technology behemoth operating in over 100 Greenblatt wrote "MacHack VI" countries. From the 1960's to in the late 1960's, the first the 1980's, it had ownership program to compete successfully relations with General Electric, in a human chess tournament, Honeywell [March 25], and NEC, Chappe's telegraph. Drawing by and considered to have the and with Motorola and France Louis Figuier, 1868. playing skills of a strong Télécom more recently. amateur [Oct 15]. It ran in just The first successful message was 16 KB of memory, and evaluated sent on March 2, 1791: "si vous about 10 positions per second. réussissez, vous serez bientôt The built upon ideas couverts de gloire” (if you Stanley S. Veit from the Kotok-McCarthy [Nov succeed, you will soon bask in Born: Dec. 25, 1919; 22] chess program. The glory) transmitted from Brulon New York City MacHack name came from MIT’s to Parce, a distance of ten miles. Died: July 29, 2010 Project MAC [July 1]. and the number VI referred to the PDP-6 Each relay station was placed Viet was the computing editor at where it ran. MacHack went on around 12 to 25 km apart, and Popular Electronics [Dec 19], and to inspire Martin Gardner's [Oct came equipped with a telescope that magazine's announcement 21] MacHic spoof in the April to help the operator observe the of the Altair 8800 in the Jan. 1975 issue of Scientific American other stations in the line. 1975 issue inspired him to open [Aug 28]. “Computer Mart” in the spring of Chappe initially called his 1976. Although it was the first Greenblatt was the main invention the tachygraph (“fast store on the East Coast, Dick developer of Maclisp, which was writer”) but the army preferred derived from LISP 1.5 [Aug 17],

1 and later became the primary to its nine DC op-amps, three designer of the MIT LISP input power supplies, several The Policeman’s machine, a computer hardwired potentiometers, relay contacts, to support Lisp. He founded Lisp high precision resistors and Beard Is Half Machines, Inc. in 1979 to capacitors, and a built-in Constructed commercialize this architecture, oscillator. It was housed in a but dedicated AI hardware tough case, measuring Dec. 25, 1984 suffered during the cruel AI 19.75 x 11.5 x 15 inches. Winter [Oct 28] of the 1980's The Racter software (short for and the onslaught of cheap raconteur) generated English microcomputers. language prose as demonstrated by the book “The Policeman’s Beard Is Half Constructed” which was composed by the TV-8-301 Released program. PC Magazine’s review, published on this day, concluded Dec. 25, 1959 that the book was “whimsical Sony’s TV-8-301 was the first and wise and sometimes fun.” fully transistorized black and Racter was implemented by white television, and also William Chamberlain and portable, with a bay in the back Thomas Etter and, according to for two 6 volt lead acid batteries, Cover Image from the Heathkit Chamberlain’s introduction in and a small eight-inch screen. EC-1 Manual (1959). Heath "The Policeman’s Beard" , was It was the first direct-view Company. written in “BASIC on a Z80 transistorized TV (rather than micro with 64K of RAM". The advertising materials stated being projection-based), and the that the EC-1 could solve Mindscape, Inc. also released an first Japanese set to be sold in “problems as complex as interactive version of Racter for the US. It also featured the first , damped harmonic motion, MS-DOS, the Amiga [July 23], use of the Sony logo. and the flight of a projectile in a and the Apple II [June 5]. Sadly, Unfortunately, it was prone to viscous medium.” These were most users found that it malfunction, and earned the ‘programmed’ in the usual generated text that was nickname “frail little baby”. Two analogue way, by inserting wires considerably less sophisticated years later, the TV5-303, a into the EC-1's control board than anything in "The smaller, more reliable, model sockets to chain the necessary Policeman’s Beard". became a huge hit. components together. A taster of Racter’s writing:

Sony also produced Japan’s first “…You are a person. a human transistor radio [Aug 7] in 1955, being. I am silicon and epoxy but Texas Instruments’ Regency Christmas Cards energy enlightened by line TR-1 was the world’s first [Oct current. What distances. what 18]. Dec. 25 ??, 1971 chasms. are to be bridged here? In Dec. 1971, an operator at the Leave me alone. and what can Arizona State Finance Center in happen? This…” Heathkit EC-1 Phoenix discovered that one of For more literary shenanigans the center's key computer tapes with computers, see [Feb 1; Aug Launched was missing. Fortunately, 1; Aug 22; Sept 9; Sept 11; Oct everything was backed up on 26]. Dec. 25, 1959 punched cards. However, when the sysadmin searched through At just $400, the Heathkit [July these backup cards, he 00] EC-1, which was sold in kit discovered that over two or pre-assembled form, was First Web Page thousand had been folded. probably the first analog gilded, and used as Christmas Dec. 25 (or 20 or 24 computer that a home user tree ornaments. might buy. Certainly, the price ??), 1990 helped it to become a mainstay This horrifying story probably Tim Berners-Lee [June 8] and of industry and universities. The refers to the financial services [Jan 26] had Heath company [July 00] had unit at ASU (Arizona State received the go-ahead from been selling analog computers, University), but there’s no CERN for their project, albeit more expensive ones, mention of it in the university's “WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a since 1956. official history. HyperText Project” [Nov 12]. The EC-1 could solve a wide By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee range of mechanical and had built all the tools necessary mathematical problems thanks to make the Web a reality:

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• A combined and example, it was ported to other During the FBI investigation, HTML editor called versions of , and officially Shimomura received several WorldWideWeb; released as version 0.1 in June prank calls teasing his hacking 1991. abilities, including from • A called CERN someone claiming that “My Kung httpd. The first public summary of the Fu is stronger than yours,” a Web seen outside of CERN was phrase that became quite The browser/editor relied on sent to the alt.hypertext NeXTSTEP for its GUI, and both popular in later years. In "The X- newsgroup on [August 6] 1991, the browser and server ran on Files" episode, “Unusual but it was nearly two more years Berners-Lee’s NeXTcube [Sept Suspects” (Nov 16, 1997), the before the browser’s source and 18]. To prevent it being “Lone Gunmen” hackers are Web protocols were released accidentally switched off, the heard to say it, and it's also into the public domain [April computer had a hand-written uttered in the film “The Core” 30]. label in red ink attached to it: (2003). "This machine is a server. DO In 2019, the WorldWideWeb NOT POWER IT DOWN!!" browser was put back online, accessible at The very first website, which ://worldwideweb.cern.ch/ naturally described the WorldWideWeb project itself, was supposedly published on this day according to a "901225" Shimomura"s date on the page. However, Berners-Lee later wrote that this Kung Fu was an example of whimsy, and the page had actually been Dec. 25, 1994 prepared before CERN closed for The computer of security expert Christmas. A now defunct CERN Tsutomu Shimomura was website about the birth of the hacked, and a software Web sets the date as Dec. 20th, disassembler he had written for but I've also seen the 24th cell phones was stolen. mentioned! Eventually it was discovered Berners-Lee had considered that an Israeli hacker was several names for the browser, responsible, but, initially Kevin such as “The Mine of Mitnick was fingered for the Information” and “The heist, and Shimomura decided to Information Mesh”. In fact, he help the FBI track him down. later dropped “WorldWideWeb” Mitnick was arrested on [Feb in favor of “Nexus” to avoid 15] 1995. confusion between the browser software and the Web itself. Although today marked the appearance of Web page no. 1, the number only really started increasing after Berners-Lee gave the programs to a number of people in the high energy physics group at CERN in March 1991. The WorldWideWeb team also grew during 1991 to include Jean-François Groff who rewrote parts of the browser in more portable , and who wrote the Line Mode I very much doubt if your Browser [Jan 12]. Groff’s C code Kung Fu is stronger than eventually morphed into Henrik mine (1973). Photo by Frystyk Nielsen's , which National General Pictures. helped other people develop their own browsers. The CERN httpd server was modified several times by Berners-Lee, Ari Luotonen and . For

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