This week’s milestones in the history of technology include the launch of the Apple IIc, the Xerox 8010 Star, the iTunes Music Store, the machine behind The Soul of the New Machine, and the open Web.
April 24, 1984
Apple introduces the Apple IIc, a 7.5 lb notebook-sized version of the Apple II that could be “lugged around like a suitcase.”
April 25, 1961
Robert Noyce is granted a patent for a “Semiconductor Device-and-Lead Structure,” a type of integrated circuit made of Silicon. The integrated circuit’s mass production capability, reliability, and building-block approach to circuit design ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of designs using discrete transistors.
April 27, 1981
Xerox introduced the Xerox 8010 Star Information System, featuring a bitmapped screen, Ethernet, a computer mouse, a laser printer, the Smalltalk language, a WYSIWYG word processor, and software for combining text and graphics in the same document. Its earlier prototypes—the inspiration for the Apple Macintosh and the subsequent PCs—were developed at Xerox PARC under the direction of Bob Taylor who passed away earlier this month.
April 28, 2003
Apple launches the iTunes Music Store. The store sold more than 1 million tracks in its first five days and became the biggest music vendor in the U.S. five years later.
April 29, 1980
Data General (DG) introduces the Eclipse MV/8000 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. Known internally as Project Eagle, the 2-year development of the 32-bit “super-minicomputer,” the engineers working on it, and the parallel (and eventually, failed) development of a competing DG product, became the subject of Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer-prize winning The Soul of a New Machine, published in 1981.
A 1988 unpublished history of Data General argues that
Both author and company took risks as the book and computer project developed. Neither fully understood what the other’s project was about or how it would turn out. One risk to Data General was that the book or excerpts of it might be published or leaked before Eagle landed and the MV/8000 announced… On the other hand, Kidder was concerned that the book be kept clear of any taint of Data General sponsorship or commercialism.
And it goes on to describe a book-promotion event arranged by the publisher:
[It was held] on a Saturday morning at the DEC Marlboro (Ma.) plant’s main lunch hall where both Kidder and West spoke. The hall was mobbed for the event with standing-room only. Although little advance notice of the meeting was made, every computer designer or electrical engineering student in New England was there or tried to get there. Since neither Kidder or West were practiced public speakers and both of them felt uncomfortable in directly promoting a “commercial” publication, a format was decided on that got both off the hook: they would have a conversation that everyone would listen to; later, questions would be taken from the floor.
A sample exchange at the meeting illustrated the friendly tension between parties – Kidder: “Had I known that “Eagle” would turn out to be such a successful computer, I might have done some things differently in the book.” West: “Had we known your book would be so successful, we might have done a few things differently, too.”
Someone asked West at the meeting if he had read the text of the book before publication. West said: “Yes, I did, but my hands trembled a lot.”
In a 2000 Wired article, which called the book “the original nerd epic,” West sums it up this way: “It’s got a Zen characteristic. It’s not a cookbook for building computers. It’s not a cookbook for good management strategies. Why did this book strike a chord with such discordant people? I’m not sure I know. Tracy can’t tell you. It has something to do with work, and dreams, and why people do it.”
April 30, 1939
The 1939 New York World’s Fair has its grand opening, with 206,000 people in attendance. The April 30 date coincided with the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration as President in New York City. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the opening day address and his speech was broadcast not only over the various radio networks but also televised in what would be the first of only two appearances he made on television. RCA-owned NBC used the event to inaugurate regularly scheduled television broadcasts in New York City. The service aired two hours of programs a week in order to “to make the art of television available to the public.” By the end of the year, a thousand receivers were sold in the U.S. The RCA receivers cost several hundred dollars and their screens were only about five inches across.
April 30, 1993
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research where Tim Berners-Lee has invented the World Wide Web, announces that it is putting the software in the public domain. This has made the World Wide Web an open and free platform, letting millions of applications bloom.
When he was awarded the ACM Turing Award earlier this month, ACM shared with the press quotes from Berners-Lee for inclusion in articles, including this one, commenting on this milestone in the evolution of the Web:
There was a certain critical point when the developers of another, competing, system announced that they might possibly, under some limited circumstances, ask for royalties. At that point, everybody using that system panicked, whether they were working for big companies or working in their garages.
At that, the use of that other system plunged; the Web continued to grow. “Open source" wasn't a term back then, but CERN’s agreement [on April 1993] to have the World Wide Web be royalty-free was critical to our success and has been very important ever since. The royalty-free nature is essential to the crazy creative innovative world which all kinds of people have built on the web.
