(1980), which he coauthored Bashir with Lynn Conway [Jan 10], May 1st promoted a very successful Iskandarovich structured VLSI methodology for Rameyev reducing microchip area by Great Exhibition minimizing interconnections. It Born: May 1, 1918; was the standard reference text May 1 - Oct 15, 1851 Baymak, Orenburg, Russia for a generation of IC designers. Died: May 16, 1994 The Great Exhibition at the In 1972, Mead and graduate Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, Rameyev was one of the student Bruce Hoeneisen London, was the first of three founders of Soviet computing, predicted that sizes famous 19th century world’s being involved in the design of would eventually shrink to 0.15 fairs. The others were the 1876 numerous including microns. Despite doubts from Centennial Exposition in the STRELA and the URAL. He the industry, Mead’s prediction Philadelphia [June 25] and the was the co-author with Issac influenced the development of 1893 World’s Columbian Bruk [Nov 8] of the first USSR the necessary technologies, and Exposition in Chicago [March patent in the field of electronic when his prediction was proved 13]. computers, for an "Automatic true in 2000, the resulting Electronic Digital Machine" transistor was very similar to (1948). the one he had described nearly 30 years before. The STRELA (1954) was the first regularly manufactured A quote: “Ignorance is not a Soviet mainframe, employing position of strength.” around 6,200 vacuum tubes, Williams tube memory [Dec 11] and read-only semiconductor memory Desk Set Released for programs. It could execute May 1, 1957 around 2,000 operations per second. One notable use of a The romantic comedy, “Desk The Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, STRELA was to calculate Set”, was directed by Walter London (1851). Sputnik’s orbital trajectory [Oct Lang, and starred Spencer Tracy 4]. and Katharine Hepburn. It was based on a 1955 Broadway play Scientific instruments were Rameyev designed the first by William Marchant. gathered together in “Class 10” machine in the URAL series in (there were 30 classes all told), 1956, with versions produced Hepburn's character works in and included electric telegraphs, throughout the1960's. Ferrite the reference department of a microscopes, air pumps and core memory was used in the major TV network, and Tracy barometers, as well as musical, URAL-2 (1959), and the URAL- arrives to replace her library horological, and surgical 11 (1965) employed with a room-sized instruments. semiconductors. URALs were known as the EMMARAC widely used in socialist ("Electro Magnetic Memory and Calculating machines were countries. Research Arithmetical popular, with a gold medal Calculator", or "Emmy" for awarded to Izrael Abraham Charles Simonyi [Sept 10] took short). It's eleven feet high, Staffel for his device. The honor old URAL-2 paper tapes with fifteen wide, with a front panel was something of a surprise, him into space on his visit to the of pulsating colored lights. with most people were betting ISS [March 26], as a reminder of on Thomas de Colmar's [May 5] how he learnt to program. IBM placed real -processing Arithmometer as the winner. machines in theater lobbies as Other soviet computing pioneers Indeed, it was the Arithmometer part of a reciprocal tie-in include Sergey Lebedev [Nov 2], that later launched the strategy. In return, the Georgi Lopato [Aug 23], and mechanical calculator industry. screenwriters enlarged the Boris Babayan [Dec 20]. Prince Albert also sent Staffel computer's role in the story. £20, in appreciation of his This was the first time that IBM invention. had used motion picture Carver Andress promotion to sell its products, due to Thomas Watson Jr. [Jan Mead 14] having just taken over as Born: 1 May 1934; CEO from his father. He also spearheaded a wider public Bakersfield, California relations campaign that saw IBM His classic textbook, products appearing on quiz “Introduction to VLSI Design” shows, the news, and variety

1 shows. For example, in March sharing system at Bolt, Beranek 1955, an IBM 701 [April 7] was DTSS Switched on and Newman [Nov 00]. pitted against broadcaster Jack May 1, 1964 However, the first time-sharing Lescoulie in solving a complex system was either the multiplication problem on the The Dartmouth Time-Sharing Compatible Time-Sharing ”Today” programme. System (DTSS), was the first System (CTSS [May 3]) at MIT, large-scale time-sharing OS to which began operating in Nov. Parts of EMMARAC, particularly allow multiple users to share a 1961, or perhaps PLATO II [Aug its massive display, were seen computer’s time simultaneously. 22], created by Donald Bitzer in again in other 20th Century Fox At 4:00 a.m., the system was early 1961. sci-fi productions, including officially switched on, and began “The Fly” (1958) and “Voyage to running BASIC [next entry]. the Bottom of the Sea” (1961). The system's implementation by Technical blunders in the movie Dartmouth BASIC a Dartmouth College student include users reading printouts team had begun in 1963, under May 1, 1964 upside down, and the direction of John Kemeny reels running in the wrong The first version of BASIC [May 31] and Thomas Kurtz direction. At one point (Beginner’s All-purpose [Feb 22]. On key design was Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is Symbolic Instruction Code) was immediate feedback; Kemeny encoded on just 20 punch cards. introduced at Dartmouth College and Kurtz observed that “any as part of its DTSS timesharing response time which averages system [previous entry]. more than 10 seconds destroys Intergalactic the illusion of having one’s own BASIC was designed by John computer”. Kemeny [May 31] and Thomas Kurtz [Feb 22] to mimic the Computer At its height, the DTSS was DTSS’ interactive command line accessed by 2,600 Dartmouth Network interface. Any line of code typed users, 5,550 people from ten in by a user that began with a other universities, and 23 high May 1, 1962 line number was added to their schools. By the early 1970's, the program; anything else was The Intergalactic Computer campus had more than 150 assumed to be a DTSS command Network (aka The Galactic terminals in 25 buildings, and and immediately executed. Network) was proposed by J.C.R. the system remained in Licklider [March 11] in a series operation until the end of 1999. At 4 a.m., in the basement of of memos. It bears a striking College Hall, Kemeny and a resemblance to today’s student programmer, John Internet, which is hardly McGeachie, simultaneously surprising since the Internet’s typed RUN on neighboring development was heavily terminals. influenced by these memos. It’s not completely clear They describe how the spread what the first program of programs and information might have been; it was among computers connected either: in a network would create a system more powerful than 10 PRINT 2 + 2 could be built by any one A view of Dartmouth College. organization. or an implementation of the Sieve of Eratosthenes for finding Licklider and Welden (“Wes”) E. DTSS was first implemented primes numbers [Feb 23]. This Clark (not to be confused with using a General Electric (GE) seems unlikely since it would Wesley A. Clark [April 10]) 235 [May 00] connected to a require at least ten lines of elaborated on these ideas in smaller GE DATANET-30 (DN- BASIC their paper, “On-Line Man 30). The DN-30 accepted Computer Communication”, commands from teletype The language was created presented at AIEE-IRE ’62 terminals [April 00] located mainly to give liberal arts between May 1-3, 1962. around the campus, and ran students a taste of computing. It programs on the GE-235. was made available to all DTSS On [Oct 1], 1962, Licklider users in June 1964. became the first director of In 1965, GE started packaging DARPA's IPTO. Part of his the DN-30 and GE-235 systems Before BASIC, Kemeny and Kurtz mandate was to find a way to together as the GE-265 (i.e. 30 + had experimented with a few realize (and fund) his 235), and it quickly became the other teaching languages. For networking vision. first commercially successful example, Kurtz and two students designed a language called Scalp time-sharing system (Self Contained ALGOL The DTSS was inspired by a ). In 1962 Kemeny and smaller PDP-1-based time-

2 an undergraduate, Sidney competitor to Intel. Perhaps one Initially the disk was Marshall, cooked up DOPE, the result was that Intel stopped unprotected, directly exposed to Dartmouth Oversimplified licensing its designs to AMD the air. Dust and dirt were a Programming Experiment. after the Intel 80386 [Oct 17] problem, so IBM redesigned the was released in 1985. disk with a plastic envelope Kurtz and Kemeny began a lined with fabric. freshman programming course AMD responded by producing its in the fall of 1964, which own Am386 chip [Oct 12], The diskette was announced on eventually standardized on essentially a reverse-engineered this day, and a patent (US giving each student 45 minutes version of Intel’s design. It also 3,668,658) was issued on June 6, of teletype time per week. They created a line of 32- RISC 1972 with Ralph Flores and also cut back on the lectures: processors known as the Herbert E. Thompson named as “We have found that two one- Am29000 series, and diversified the inventors. The hour lectures are entirely into graphics, audio devices, and drive patent (US 3,678,481) was adequate to introduce the novice EPROM memory. It had issued on July 18, 1972, assigned to BASIC. By the end of the enormous success with its K6 to Warren L. Dalziel, Jay. B. second hour he is raring to write [May 26], Athlon [June 23] and Nilson, and Donald L. Wartner. his first program.” Opteron processors, and was the It wasn’t until 1973 that IBM first company to produce a 1- Kemeny and Kurtz never released a read/write floppy GHz microprocessor [March 6]. copyrighted BASIC, allowing disk drive system, the 33FD; it dozens of variations to appear In 2009, following a series of soon became an industry [Jan 2; June 10; Aug 1; Nov 00; complaints lodged by AMD, the standard. Nov 18], and greatly enhancing European Commission fined its popularity in the process. Intel a record €1.06 billion ($1.45 billion) for engaging in A quote by an anonymous anticompetitive practices. SQL (SEQUEL) programmer, who probably only knew FORTRAN [Feb 26]: “If May 1-3, 1974 FORTRAN is the lingua franca … SQL was developed at IBM by BASIC is the lingua playpen.” The 8-inch Floppy Donald D. Chamberlin and May 1, 1971 Raymond F. Boyce after learning about Ted Codd’s [Aug 19] AMD IBM wanted an inexpensive way relational model. to send System/370 [April 7] Chamberlin and Boyce’s first May 1, 1969 software updates to their attempt at a relational customers. The IC manufacturer Advanced language was Square, but it was Micro Devices (AMD) was IBM Direct Access Storage difficult to use due to its founded by Walter Jeremiah product manager, Alan Shugart subscript notation. (Jerry) Sanders, and seven [Sept 27], assigned several Next up came SEQUEL colleagues from Fairchild design teams to the problem, (Structured English Query Semiconductor [Oct 1]. and the IBM 23FD Floppy Disk Language), designed to Incidentally, nearly a year before Drive System (codenamed manipulate and retrieve data [July 18], Robert Noyce [Dec 12] Minnow) was the outcome. from IBM’s relational database and Gordon Moore [Jan 3] had management system, System R left Fairchild to form Intel. [June 7]. Sanders kept a poster in his On this day, Chamberlin and office which read, “Yea, though I Boyce presented a paper on walk through the valley of the their work, “SEQUEL: A shadow of death, I shall fear no Structured English Query evil – for I am the meanest son of Language” at SIGFIDET '74 in a bitch in the valley.” However, Ann Arbor, Michigan. every employee was awarded stock options, a huge innovation The acronym was later changed at the time. to SQL because “SEQUEL” was already trademarked by the Another of Sander's sayings was Hawker Siddeley aircraft “People first, products and profit 8" and 3.5" floppy disks (and a company. will follow!” This was given as a USB handy drive). Photo by printout to each new AMD hire. Pamporoff. Chamberlin described the In 1982, a licensing deal with relationship between their work and Codd’s by analogy: “Ted Intel made AMD a second source The system utilized a read-only, Codd provided the concept for a of Intel chips for IBM. This gave 8-inch-diameter flexible diskette new house, and the people who AMD an enormous burst of called the “memory disk,” which designed and built System R growth, making it a serious held a whopping 80K of data. were the ones who prepared the

3 detailed blueprints, poured the become LibreOffice on [Sept 28] foundation, and did the So Many 2010. carpentry work.” OpenOffices On June 1, 2011, Oracle Unfortunately, IBM’s corporate announced that it was donating management was reluctant to May 1, 2002 OpenOffice to the Apache adopt SQL because its existing On July 19, 2000, Sun Foundation [March 30]. Apache IMS hierarchical database Microsystems [Feb 24] renamed it Apache OpenOffice. product [Aug 14] was selling announced that it would release well in the late 1970’s. the source code of StarOffice as However, in June 1979, the OpenOffice.org (OOo) Relational Software, Inc. (now project. Its website went live on Oracle Corporation [Aug 17]) Oct. 13, 2000, and version 1.0 released its own SQL-based was released on this day. RDBMS called Oracle 2 (there OpenOffice included a word was no version 1). processor (Writer), a Chamberlin later remarked, “We spreadsheet (Calc), a wrote the paper that Larry presentation application Ellison based his company on.” (Impress), a drawing application (Draw), a formula editor (Math), and a database management application (Base). Coq Released A somewhat famous bug was the May 1, 1989 "OpenOffice will never print on Tuesdays" error, which meant Coq is an interactive theorem that PostScript files [Oct 6] sent prover which checks proofs from Ubuntu [Oct 20] to a based on supplied mathematical printer would not print if it was assertions, helps find proofs, and Tuesday. can extract a program from the constructive proof of a formal The bug turned out not to be due specification. When viewed as a to OpenOffice at all, or the UNIX programming language, Coq CUPS printing system, or the supports typed functional Brother MFC420CN printer programming; as a logical drivers. The error was in the system, it implements higher- UNIX file command which order type theory. checked if the temporary print document was PostScript. For Coq was developed by a team some reason the text led by Thierry Coquand, after "Tue/%%CreationDate:" was who the system is named, causing it to fail, but although coq means "rooster" in "Tue/%%CreationDate:" meant French, so the name also follows printing would work on every a French tradition of naming day, including Tuesday. research tools after animals. OpenOffice's ancestor, Development began in 1984, StarOffice, began in 1985 as involving a collaboration StarWriter, implemented by between the École Marco Börries at StarDivision. Polytechnique, University of The integration of the other Paris-Sud, Paris Diderot programs followed, and University, and CNRS. StarDivision began offering Georges Gonthier and Benjamin StarOffice for free in 1998. Werner used Coq to create a StarOffice was acquired by Sun proof of the four color theorem in Aug. 1999. [June 21] in 2005. Oracle [Aug 17] finalized its In June 2021, "The Register" acquisition of Sun on Jan. 27, news site reported that the Coq 2010 and commercial community is currently looking development of OpenOffice.org for a new name since it has was terminated shortly become impossible to ignore thereafter. that Coq sounds like bawdy Due to concerns over Oracle's English slang. management of the project, OpenOffice was forked to

4