Karow’s company, URW, became a major supplier of digitized Nov. 11th fonts for companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe.

Roberto Mario (Bob) Fano Abacus Beats Born: Nov. 11, 1917; Calculator Turin, Italy Nov. 11, 1946 Died: July 13, 2016 A contest was held in Tokyo that Fano's work on information pitted the soroban (the Japanese theory included the Shannon- abacus) against an electric Fano data compression method calculator to judge their relative with Claude Shannon [April 30], speeds and accuracy on but he also contributed to Donald Michie (1986). Photo by problems involving the four network theory. In 1961, Fano Petermowforth. CC BY-SA 3.0. basic arithmetic operations. and Fernando Corbató [July 1] developed the Compatible Time- In Edinburgh , during the 1960's The soroban was utilized by Sharing System (CTSS [May 3]), and early 1970's, his team Kiyoshi Matsuzaki, a champion one of the earliest time-sharing developed Freddy, the first lab operator, who worked for the systems. robot capable of assembling Savings Bureau of the Japanese complex objects from parts. postal administration. The The success of the CTSS However, overly ambitious calculator was placed in the convinced MIT to launch Project predictions about Freddy’s hands of US Army Private MAC [July 1], with Fano as the future abilities prompted a Thomas Nathan Wood of the founding director. It grew into backlash of skepticism from 240th Finance Distributing MIT’s largest interdepartmental rivals [Aug 30]. Section at General MacArthur’s research lab, and eventually headquarters. Wood was became the renowned Computer Michie had worked at Bletchley considered the most Science and AI Lab (CSAIL). Park [Aug 15] during WWII, experienced calculator operator contributing to the efforts to Fano was one of the first open- in Japan at the time. break the Lorenz cipher [June 1]. source advocates, before that In April 1944 he invented a The competition, held at the phrase had been invented. He technique that employed a Ernie Pyle theater in Tokyo liked to call computing a public Colossus [Jan 18] to decode the (now the Takarazuka theater), utility that should be accessible secondary wheel of the Lorenz resulted in a decisive win for the to everyone. machine, which meant that texts soroban, 4 to 1, with the electric that had taken days to decipher calculator prevailing only in could now be broken in hours. multiplication. The Nippon Times Donald Michie reported that “Civilization, on He also found time to have the threshold of the atomic age, Born: Nov. 11, 1923; frequent lunchtime discussions tottered Monday afternoon as with Alan Turing [June 23] about Rangoon, Burma the 2,000-year-old abacus beat 'intelligent' machine while Died: July 7, 2007 the electric calculating machine.” playing chess. Michie was one of the founders A similar, but more awesome, of AI research in the UK, tale appears in the “Lucky focusing on natural language Numbers” chapter of “Surely, systems and theories of Peter Karow You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” intelligence. In the 1950's, he Born: Nov. 11, 1940; [May 2]. The abacus proved to also worked with his wife on in be faster than Feynman’s Stargard, Pomerania vitro fertilization. prodiguous mental abilities for In the mid-1970's, Karow multiplication and division (he In 1960, he developed the released the Ikarus system, only had pen and paper), but Machine Educable Noughts And which digitally generated fonts Feynman won out when Crosses Engine (MENACE), one at any resolution by employing a calculating the cube root of of the first programs capable of spline model for each 1729.03. learning to play an unbeatable character's outline. The name game of tic-tac-toe [May 21]. referred to the frequency of Since computers weren’t readily system crashes during the early available at this time, Michie days of its development (i.e. just implemented the software with as Icarus fell from the sky). the help of 300 matchboxes and colored beads.

1

refers to the oil magnate, since become the world’s biggest Unisys Formed Armand Hammer, who owned it investment corporation, and the Nov. 11, 1986 before Gates. largest gaming and social media company. Analysts estimate that Written between 1506 and The Burroughs Corporation [Jan Tencent's digital services are 1510, the 72-page notebook 26] and Sperry Rand [Jan 25] used by more than two-thirds of records da Vinci’s thoughts on merged to become Unisys, the the Chinese population. tides, dams, fossils, and the world’s second largest computer relationship between the Moon, Tencent also owns the most manufacturer. the Earth, and the Sun. It's profitable game in the world, The Unisys name was chosen written using da Vinci’s mirror- "Honor of Kings", which makes from over 31,000 submissions. image handwriting style. about $1bn each quarter and has Chuck Ayoub's winning entry 200 million monthly players. Gates later included scans of was composed from parts of the However, after the Chinese some of the pages as screen words "united", "information", government called the game saver images and wallpaper files and "systems". “poison” and a “drug”, Tencent in Microsoft Plus! for Windows introduced one-hour game- 95 [Aug 16]. Unisys continued working for playing time limits for under- various government agencies in The book is currently located in 12's, extending to two hours for the same way as its parents. Xanadu [Dec 00]. 12- to 18-year-olds. However, as mainframes declined in importance, it shifted Just in time for the 19th National into IT services. Unisys products Party Congress in 2017, Tencent included the Micro A in 1989, IAHC released a mobile game called the first desktop mainframe. “Clap for Xi Jinping: An Nov. 11, 1996 Awesome Speech”, in which players had 19 seconds to clap The Internet International Ad as many times as possible for Gates Buys da Hoc Committee (IAHC) was President Xi by tapping their formed by Jon Postel [Aug 6] to smartphone screens rapidly. Vinci produce a “Memorandum of Understanding” which Tencent is often grouped with Nov. 11, 1994 recommended the creation of two other Chinese Internet Bill Gates [Oct 28] purchased seven new Internet domains: giants, Baidu [Jan 18] and Leonardo da Vinci’s “Codex .arts, .firm, .info, .nom, .rec, Alibaba [April 4], and Leicester,” also known as the .store, and .web. The precise collectively known as BAT. "Codex Hammer", for $30.8 difference between .firm, .store, million at auction. This made it and the existing .com, was left the most expensive book at the unclear. Dream Robots time, but it's since dropped to Having completed its job, the 8th place in absolute terms ( organization was dissolved on Nov. 11, 2000 before adjusting for inflation). May 1, 1997, and The Internet At the Robodex 2000 conference Corporation for in Yokohama, introduced Assigned Names and its humanoid Sony Dream Robot, Numbers (ICANN [Sept the SDR-3X, although it was 18], (also formed by quickly renamed the QRIO Postel) took over. It (short for “Quest for cuRIOsity". approved seven new This release followed the launch domains in 2000: .info, of their AIBO robotic dog the .museum, .name, .aero, previous year [May 11]. .biz, .coop, and .pro. The precise difference The QRIO was only 50 cm tall between .biz and .firm, and weighed just 50 kg, but was .store, and .com, was capable of dancing, kicking a left unclear. ball, getting up from a prone position, and walking quickly (covering around fifteen meters Pages from the Codex Leicester. per minute). This was good Leonardo da Vinci. Tencent enough for The Guinness World Nov. 11, 1998 Records (the 2005 edition) to The "Leicester" name comes deem it the first bipedal robot from Thomas Coke, Earl of Chinese company Tencent capable of running. Holdings Limited was founded Leicester, who acquired the The QRIO was equipped with by Ma (“Pony Ma”) Huateng, book in 1719 (and it stayed in image and speech recognition Zhang Zhidong, Xu Chenye, Chen his family for 250 years after software running on the Aperios Yidan, and Zeng Liqing. It has that). The "Hammer" appellation real-time OS, with two CCD

2

cameras and seven microphones The PS3 faced strong embedded in its head. competition from Microsoft’s Xbox 360 [Nov 22] and On Jan. 26, 2006, the AIBO and Nintendo’s Wii [Nov 19], which QRIO were discontinued, but a meant that it performed less new generation of AIBO's well than earlier appeared in 2017. ([Dec 3], [March 4]). Indeed, For more robot men, see [Feb Sony’s games division posted an 00], [Feb 24], [March 23], operating loss of $1.97 billion in [March 24], [April 16], [April 2007, and soon after, Ken 30], [July 17], [July 30], [Sept Kutaragi [Aug 2], President of 15], [Nov 30], [Dec 22]. Sony Computer Entertainment, announced plans to retire. Several supercomputer Heroes of Video configurations have been built with PS3s, including the Condor Games Stamps Cluster [Dec 1], a 200-node device used to crack SSL Nov. 11, 2005 authentication [Dec 23], and the smaller CrackStation [Nov 28], The French postal service released a collection of stamps The PlayStation 4 was released on the theme of “Heros des Jeux- on [Nov 15] 2013. Video” featuring Adibou, "Donkey Kong" [July 9], "Lara Croft", Link from Zelda [Feb 21], Mario [Sept 13], "Pac-Man" [May 22], "Prince of Persia", Rayman, "The Sims" [Feb 4], and Spyro. In Oct. 2014, Ireland’s postal service joined in, issuing four stamps celebrating "Pac-Man", "Space Invaders" [June 5], Mario. and "Sonic the Hedgehog" [June 23]. For more stamps action, see [April 7], [June 30], [Oct 8], [Dec 11].

PlayStation 3 Nov. 11, 2006 Sony unveiled the PlayStation 3 (PS3) in Japan, featuring a 3.2 GHz microprocessor, a 500 MHz GPU, 256 MB of RAM, 256 MB of VRAM, and a 60 GB hard drive. It was the first gaming system to use Blue-ray discs [July 18], which helped Blue-ray gain wider acceptance. Sony started selling the PS3 in North America a week later, and sorely underestimated its popularity by only having 400,000 units on hand. Retailers’ inability to meet the crazy levels of demand led to a few problems – two men were shot during a scuffle over ownership, and several armed robberies were committed to obtain the device.

3