radio across the Atlantic, from Jersey that sold toy trains at the offices of The New York Christmas; Kotok would help set Nov. 9th Times to Le Matin in Paris; it up the displays. took seven minutes. Western Union began First Facsimiles transmitting halftone The Soviets Attack Nov. 9, 1907 photographs in 1921, and the Associated Press began a service Nov. 9, 1979 Édouard Belin used his in 1935. By then the images At 3:00am the North American Bélinographe to transmit a were being referred to as “wire Aerospace Defense Command photograph of a Alsatian chapel photos” or “belinos.” (NORAD [Aug 1]) notified over telegraph lines in a circuit national security adviser spanning 1,717km from Paris to Zbigniew Brzezinski that the Lyon, Bordeaux, and back to Soviet Union had launched 250 Paris, in just 22 minutes. ballistic missiles at the US. Born: Nov. 9, 1941; President Jimmy Carter only had Philadelphia, Pennsylvania a few minutes to decide how to Died: May 26, 2006 respond. Meanwhile, NORAD Kotok began studying electrical computers helpfully revised engineering at MIT when he was their estimate of the number of only 16. He soon discovered the incoming missiles to 2,200. Fortunately, before Carter's (TMRC [Sept 6]), and deadline, satellite and radar programming on the TX-0 [Nov systems revealed that NORAD's 20] and PDP-1 [Nov 00] which report was a false alarm. had made available It was later determined that the to TMRC members. incident was triggered after a Kotok was the main developer of training scenario had been John McCarthy’s [Sept 4] IBM loaded onto a computer. More 704 chess-playing in worryingly, NORAD’s 1959, which he wrote up as AI Commander-in-chief also noted Édouard Belin in his lab (1920). Project Memo 41 and as his that the “precise mode of failure Photo by the Bain News Service. bachelor’s thesis. could not be replicated.” He and Robert A. Saunders built The possibility of Accidental His invention used a light beam the game controllers for Armageddon continued – over to scan an image wrapped Spacewar! [May 17] which let the next few months there were around a cylinder, and convert two people play side by side. three more false alarms, caused the reflected light into electrical Kotok and [Aug by faulty computer chips (see impulses via a photoelectric cell. 16] later used one of these as an [June 3]). There have been many input device for their T-Square other close calls, caused by a The process used the basic drafting program. variety of factors: low battery principle upon which all charge, poor wiring, a power subsequent fax machines were At DEC [Aug 23], Kotok was the outage, a solar flare, and based although several principal architect and designer moonrise in Norway. For a inventors contributed to the of several important machines, Soviet incident, see [Sept 26]. overall fax design. For example, including the PDP-10 [Jan 5] the Bélinographe was a and VAX 8600. On a happier note, NORAD has successor to Ernest A. Hummel’s much better success tracking Kotok helped found the World Telediagraph of 1895, which had Santa [Dec 24]. Wide Web Consortium (W3C transmitted electrically scanned shellac-on-foil pictures between [Oct 1]). For example, in April US newspapers. Other 1994, Kotok, Steve Fink, Gail contributors included Alexander Grant and Brian Reid [Oct 6] Apple III Revised Bain [Oct 12], Giovanni Caselli traveled to CERN [Dec 16] to [April 25], and Elisha Gray [Aug persuade Tim Berners-Lee [June Nov. 9, 1981 8] to form the consortium to 2]. Apple released an upgraded promote open standards. version of the Apple III [May 19] By 1920, Belin had extended his Berners-Lee later described which addressed the model’s process to support the Kotok as “one of the early wise many reliability issues. It transmission of photographs via men of .” radio. The first test took place on featured sturdier hardware June 17, 1921 from Bordeaux to Kotok's love of model trains sockets, twice as much memory Paris. On Aug. 4, the first came about because his father (256 KB of RAM), an optional 5 facsimile was transmitted by owned a hardware store in New

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MB external hard drive, and taken, by the Firebird database technology was too unreliable updated software. server, so another change was and expensive. necessitated. Despite the hard drive doubling "She is truly a technological the system’s price, it briefly Although “Firefox” is the marvel," Chief of Naval provided Apple with a crucial nickname of the red panda Operations Adm. Jonathan market advantage as IBM’s PC native to the Himalayas and Greenert said in a webcast [Aug 12] didn’t yet support one. southwestern China, it proved to ceremony at today's christening. However, the Apple III's be unique in the computing reputation never really industry. However, a close recovered. examination of Firefox's logo shows it to be a fox not a panda because, according to Jon Hicks (the designer), a panda “didn’t really conjure up the right imagery”. By many estimates, IE 6 [Aug 27] had over 90% of the browser market at the time, but within nine months, an estimated 60 million people had downloaded Firefox. Firefox’s share continued to grow, The Apple III. Photo by reaching 32% at the end of Alexander Schaelss. CC BY-SA 2009, temporarily making it the 3.0. world’s most popular browser. Usage then declined after Google Apple tried again with the Apple Chrome [Sept 8] was released. III Plus released in Dec. 1983, which ran the "Sophisticated Operating System (a great name, but poor acronym – SOS). It USS Gerald R. Ford lasted around four months, before the III series was finally Nov. 9, 2013 discontinued [April 24]. Although construction began in Aug. 2005, the USS Gerald R. Ford was formerly christened by Firefox 1.0 the US Navy on this day. When it was eventually finished (in Nov. 9, 2004 2015) it became the world's most technically advanced The Mozilla Foundation [Jan 23] aircraft, along with costing an released version 1.0 of the estimated $15.5 billion to Firefox web browser, created by develop. Its actual official Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt, and delivery to the navy occurred in Blake Ross. It represented the May 2017. first serious attack upon the dominance of Microsoft’s The lengthy construction period Explorer (IE) [Aug 16] was partly due to it being the since the downfall of Netscape world's largest aircraft carrier, [March 17]. but it was also plagued by problems with its brand-new Ironically, although Netscape technologies. For example, the had been beaten by IE, its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch codebase contributed to the System, or EMALS, was found to Mozilla Suite, which eventually have issues launching heavier led to Firefox [Feb 23]. Indeed, planes, but a software change Firefox’s original name had been fixed that. "Phoenix" to reflect the browser's "rise from the ashes". President Donald Trump had a Unfortunately, it had to be typically forthright alternative changed (to "Firebird") because solution, which he suggested in of a trademark dispute with the an interview with Time BIOS manufacturer, Phoenix Magazine – a return to Technologies. Unfortunately “goddamn steam” for the carrier (again), "Firebird" was also catapults, as the new digital

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