May 23Rd John Bardeen
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work with Shockley further, and Gates praised the men (no was assigned to another group. women were deemed pioneering enough) for using May 23rd At the University of Illinois, Windows when it was still seen Bardeen resumed research he as “sugarcoating”, and as had begun in the 1930's on interfering with the “real things” John Bardeen superconductivity. that a user wanted to do. Born: May 23, 1908; Bardeen only brought one of his He also took time to report that Madison, Wisconsin three children to the 1956 Nobel Microsoft had sold over 50 Died: Jan. 30, 1991 Prize ceremony in Stockholm. million copies of Windows [April King Gustav VI humorously told Bardeen is the only person to 6] – this a year before the him off, so Bardeen said he’d have won the Nobel Prize in introduction of Windows 95 make sure to bring all his Physics twice: first on [Dec 10] [Aug 24]. children the next time. He kept 1956 with Walter Brattain [Feb his promise. The seven pioneers were: 10] and William Shockley [Feb 13] for the transistor [Dec 16]; Alan Cooper [June 3] – the and again in 1972 with Leon father of Visual Basic [May Neil Cooper and John Robert Casio FP-200 20]; Schrieffer for the BCS theory of superconductivity (named using Launched Lyle Griffin – creator of their initials). Micrografx Designer, the May 23, 1983 earliest graphics application for Windows; The Casio [June 1] FP-200 was a popular early laptop (310 x 220 Joe Guthridge – he led the x 55.5 mm; 1.5 kg without development of Samna Amí, batteries), unveiled at the Japan the first Windows word Microcomputer Show at the processor, later renamed Ryutsu Center in Tokyo. Lotus Word Pro [Jan 26]; The device featured an 8-line x Ted Johnson – development 20-character black and white lead of PageMaker [July 15], LCD (or 160 x 64 pixels in and co-founder of Visio graphic mode), an Intel 80C85 Corporation; chip, 8K RAM (expandable to Ian Koenig – he led the 32K), and 32K ROM. It included development of the Reuters support for a printer, cassette Terminal financial recorder, modem, and floppy information software; disk drive. It ran on four AA alkaline batteries that could last Ray Ozzie [Nov 20] – creator John Bardeen (1956). The Nobel for about ten hours. of Lotus Notes [Dec 7], and foundation. BASIC and a simple spreadsheet later Microsoft’s Chief program (CETL; Casio Easy Software Architect; On [Dec 23], 1947, Bardeen and Table Language) were included. Charles Petzold [Feb 2] – the Brattain – working without Its main competitors were the author of the bestselling Shockley – created the point- Epson HX-20 [Nov 18] and the “Programming Windows” contact transistor. Bardeen’s TRS-80 Model 100 [March 29], series published by Microsoft main contribution was to and its main advantage was a Press. formulate the problems related lower price. to the semiconductor's surface No further Windows Pioneers which limited its charge carrying have been created since this abilities. event. In public, Shockley took the Windows Pioneers lion’s share of the credit for the May 23-26 1994 work, and also essentially Java Announced blocked Bardeen and Brattain Seven individuals were from working on the junction presented with “Windows May 23, 1995 transistor, which meant that Pioneers” awards by Bill Gates Prev: [Feb 23] Next: [Jan 23] neither of them had much to do [Oct 28] during the “Windows with the development of the World” part of Spring COMDEX John Gage, director of the transistor beyond the first year. [Dec 3]. The ceremony was held Science Office at Sun in the ballroom of the Ritz- Microsystems [Feb 24], along Bardeen left Bell Labs in July Carlton Hotel in Atlanta. with Marc Andreesen [July 9], 1951, and Brattain refused to co-founder of Netscape Communications [March 25], 1 announced Java [Jan 00] and the 2016 match against Lee Sedol, 4- previously they were mainly HotJava browser at SunWorld 1. That wasn’t AlphaGo’s first confined to experimental music ’95. win – on [Oct 5] 2015, it became genres. the first Go program to beat Fan Java’s big slogan at the event Even so, recording music with a Hui, the European Go champion. (and for many years afterwards) synthesizer was still a tedious was “write once, run anywhere”, Two even more powerful and time-consuming process. which meant that the same Java versions appeared later that Only one note could be played at application could run unchanged year: AlphaGo Zero (Oct), and a time, so each track had to be on a wide range of OSes, AlphaZero (Dec). painfully assembled. For provided a JVM (Java Virtual instance, “Switched-On Bach” AlphaGo Zero reached the level Machine) had been installed on took approximately 1,000 hours of "Master" in just 21 days by those systems. to produce. playing games against itself. Java ‘applets’ could run inside The first moogs were also quite AlphaZero was a generalized the HotJava browser, a clone of unreliable and often needed version of AlphaGo Zero that NCSA Mosaic [Sept 28]. tuning; Carlos recalled hitting could also play chess and Shōgi . However, the really big surprise hers with a hammer in order to With just eight hours of training was that Andreessen said that reset the levels. it the Netscape browser would be outperformed supporting Java applets as well. AlphaGo, and This meant that Java would be also defeated a able to run on any machine that had the world’s most popular top chess program browser. This ensured that as (Stockfish) and the popularity of the Web a top Shōgi soared, so did Java. program The only negatives were that the (Elmo). alpha and beta releases of Java AlphaGo Zero’s in 1995 proved to be highly neural network unstable and slow. The many was trained issues were gradually fixed as using the Java Development Kit (JDK TensorFlow [July 00]. The Minimoog synthesizer. [Jan 23]) was revised. Photo by Krash. “Java is the most distressing thing to happen to computing Robert Arthur A more portable model, the since MS-DOS.” – Alan Kay [May Minimoog, was released in 1970, 17]. Moog and is often called the most (rhymes with “vogue”) influential synthesizer in Born: May 23, 1934; history. AlphaGo Beats NYC Ke Jie Died: Aug. 21, 2005 Moog created the ubiquitous May 23, 2017 Moog synthesizer, which was much smaller than other AlphaGo was developed by machines, much cheaper, and Google’s DeepMind team in could be played via a keyboard, London to play the board game making it attractive to ordinary Go. On this day “AlphaGo musicians. New Scientist Master” (its successor) beat Ke magazine called it the first Jie, the world No. 1 ranking Go commercial synthesizer. player, three games out of three at “The Future of Go Summit” in One of Moog’s earliest Wuzhen, China. customers was Wendy Carlos, whom Moog later credited with Ke Jie had been ranked the top providing valuable feedback on player since late 2014. As a the synthesizer’s development. consequence, the software was awarded professional 9-dan by In Oct. 1968, Carlos released the Chinese Weiqi Association. “Switched-On Bach”, a collection of Bach pieces performed by Before the event, DeepMind had Carlos and Benjamin Folkman believed that “Master” was on a moog. The album played a about three go-stones stronger key role in introducing than the AlphaGo that won a synthesizers to popular music; 2 .