18 from 2 − 1 downwards. The necessary divisions were done June 21st by repeated subtractions since the Baby had that operation Timothy William implemented in hardware. The Flip-flop Bray The test started at 11.15am, and Born: June 21, 1955; June 21, 1918 terminated after performing 3.5 million operations reliably. Vancouver, Canada William Henry Eccles and Frank Legend has it, quite unfairly, that Bray was one of the co-authors Wilfred Jordan from London’s this was the only program of the XML specification [Feb 10] City and Guilds Technical Kilburn ever wrote. at the World Wide Web College filed a patent for Geoff Tootill wrote a revised Consortium at the end of the “Improvements in Ionic Relays,” version the following month 1990's. which was granted in 1920. (which still exists), and in mid- He had become the manager of The device was originally called July Alan Turing [June 23] the New Oxford English the Eccles–Jordan trigger circuit, submitted a third program that Dictionary (OED) project at the or bistable multivibrator, but the utilized a long division routine. University of Waterloo in 1987, much catchier name, flip-flop, The Baby was deemed fully and worked with SGML, which soon caught on, probably operational in Oct. 1949. would later become central to because of the sound emitted on The machine had been XML's standardization. a speaker during the transition developed over the previous two between its two states. It was Halfway through the XML years by Freddie Williams [June this ability to switch smoothly specification process, Bray 26], Kilburn, and Toothil. It had between states that made it such accepted some consulting work 550 valves, could execute 700 an ideal choice for building from Netscape [March 25], instructions per second, and had digital circuits. It was first provoking protests from 32 words of 32-bit memory. employed in the computing Microsoft. The dispute was domain for the Colossus [Jan 18; As such, it was the first machine eventually solved by the June 1] in 1944. to implement von Neumann’s appointment of Microsoft’s Jean Paoli as another co-editor. stored program concept [June 30]. Indeed, Baby was primarily Although Bray worked for Manchester Baby constructed to test the Williams- Google [Aug 19] for several Kilburn tube [Dec 11], the first years, he left in March 2014 as June 21, 1948 electronic random access he was unwilling to relocate to memory. Other computer Silicon Valley from Vancouver. The Small-Scale Experimental projects, such as the EDSAC Bray said his heart was in Machine (SSEM or Manchester [May 6], had stuck with mercury Vancouver and found the Bay Baby) took 52 minutes to run its delay lines even though they Area “congested, racist, first program. were bulky, expensive, awkward incestuous, and overpriced.” to set up, and relatively slow. There's been plenty of heated debate over which machine was the first to implement von MITRE Corp. Neumann’s concept. Baby was July 21, 1958 an experimental machine, and so some historians claim that the Mitre was formed in 1958 to BINAC ([April 4], 1949) or provide an overall direction to EDSAC were the first "real" the companies involved in the stored program computer. SAGE project [June 26]. Most of MITRE's early employees Turing‘s role in the project was transferred from MIT's Lincoln nominally as the head of the lab, Lab [Dec 15] where SAGE was but according to Maurice Wilkes being developed. [June 26], “Freddie Williams A replica of the Manchester took good care that Turing did After SAGE was fully deployed in Baby on display at the Museum not meddle in the engineering 1963, the Federal Aviation of Science and Industry in design of the machine that he Administration (FAA), selected Manchester. Photo by and Tom Kilburn were building." Mitre to develop a similar KGGucwa. CC BY-SA 3.0. system for automated air traffic Baby's success prompted the control. Unbelievably, the development of the much more National Airspace System (NAS) The 17-instruction sequence, powerful Manchester Mark I is still in use, although the FAA written by Tom Kilburn [Aug [June 16], and the Ferranti Mark has been working on a 11], found the highest factor of I [Feb 12], the first general replacement called NextGen for 218, by testing every integer purpose commercial computer. 1 the last 15 years. It moves away They completed the proof using units were attached at once, they from ground-based air traffic a program that eliminated cases would stretch out many feet to control to a satellite-based (taking over a 1,000 hours to do the side. system. so), making it the first major The TI-99/4A was a commercial theorem proved using a There are around 41,000 NAS flop, mainly because it lost a computer. Other operational facilities in the US, price war with Commodore's mathematicians were skeptical utilizing over 71,000 pieces of at first, but the proof was later VIC-20 [May 00]. After suffering equipment, ranging from radar deficits of over $100 million in independently verified. systems to communication relay 1983, TI discontinued the stations. On average, about To commenorate the event, machine. 50,000 flights use NAS services Appel and Haken’s math each day. department at the University of Illinois issued a postmark with the words, “Four colors suffice.” AS/400 WATFOR Neil Robertson, Daniel P. June 21, 1988 Sanders, Paul Seymour, and IBM announced a new midrange Summer 1965 Robin Thomas created a mainframe, the AS/400, with quadratic-time algorithm in Four math students from the more than 1,000 packages ready 1996 that improved on the University of Waterloo – Gus to run, making it the biggest quartic-time exhibited by Appel German, James G. Mitchell, simultaneous software and Haken’s proof. It also only Richard Shirley and Robert announcement in history. required the checking of 633 Zarnke, led by Peter Shantz, cases. The AS/400 quickly became one developed a Fortran compiler of the world’s most popular for the IBM 7040 [Nov 30] called In 2005, Benjamin Werner and business systems. By 1997, IBM WATFOR (WATerloo FORtran). Georges Gonthier formalized a had shipped nearly a half- proof of the theorem inside the It was fast, with good error million units, and the 400,000th Coq proof assistant [May 1]. diagnostics, and proved popular AS/400 was specially presented with students. The compiler to Greg LeMond, the three-time allowed the 7040 to execute winner of the Tour de France 6,000 jobs an hour, reducing the TI-99/4 bicycle race, on Oct. 9, 1996. cost of running a program from The OS for the AS/400 was $10 to 10c. June 21, 1979 originally called OS/400, WATFOR was soon ported to Texas Instruments (TI) following the pattern begun with other machines, and the announced the TI-99/4 at CES OS/360 [March 31]. Everything textbook “Fortran IV with [June 24], making it the first was an object (with built-in WATFOR and WATFIV” (1970) home computer to use a 16-bit persistence and garbage influenced a generation of microprocessor, the TMS9900 collection), unlike the more computer science students. [June 00]. traditional UNIX-like approach of “everything is a file”. WATFOR's upgrade WATFIV However, the device didn’t meet was pronounced as “WHAT US radio frequency regulations, In 2017, it was estimated that FIVE”. An alternative articulation was “WHAT FOUR”, as in WAT-F-IV. Four Colors Suffice June 21, 1976 A TI-99/4A with all its In 1852, Francis Guthrie noted expansion units. Photo by Ron there were still over 100,000 with some surprise that he only Reuter (aka MainByte). companies using AS/400 needed four colors to fill in a technology, including a great map of English counties. He so was only released in any number of insurance firms. wondered whether it was true of quantity in early 1980. It also any map. suffered from a disappointing “chicklet-like” keyboard, slow In 1976, Kenneth Appel and BASIC, and a high price. Timex Datalink Wolfgang Haken announced that they were able to show that if no TI launched the TI-99/4A in June 21, 1994 more than four colors were 1982 which could be connected The Timex Datalink was co- needed for 1,936 basic cases, to a standard color TV set, and developed with Microsoft as a then more than four would had a better keyboard. However, wearable alternative to PDAs never be needed. if all the possible expansion 2 [Jan 7] with additional attributes was probably the Seiko UC-2000 such as water resistance. It was [Jan 00]. also certified by NASA for space travel. The Datalink was demonstrated Drivers Day by Bill Gates [Oct 28] on this day, and Microsoft initially June 21, 2006 offered them as a mail-in bonus All Windows drivers are dated with every purchase of Office 95 June 21, 2006, even those [Aug 1]. created long afterwards. A driver's version number will increase, but its date timestamp is never changed. This fixed timestamp means that the system decides on which driver to use based on other criteria, including the hardware ID and version numbers. The date's significance is that it was when Microsoft released the Windows Vista RTM (release to manufacturing) version. Current drivers only have to be compatible with this version of Windows, or newer. The Timex Datalink 150. Photo by Dr. K. CC BY 3.0. Early models included the Datalink 50, 70, 150 and 150s, with the numbers indicating the approximate number of phone numbers that could be stored in its memory.