March 30, 1950
Bell Telephone Laboratories announces the invention of the phototransistor, a transistor operated by light rather than electric current, invented by John Northrup Shive. In May 1950, a Bell Labs publication described the phototransistor as:
An entirely new type of "electric eye" much smaller and sturdier than present photo-electric cells and possibly cheaper-has been invented at the Laboratories. During the past quarter century, electric eyes have found widespread use in electronics because of their ability to control electric currents by the action of light. To the layman, one type is perhaps best known for automatically opening and closing doors, but such devices have many other important uses in television, sound motion pictures, wirephotos, and still many more in industry…
Although the Phototransistor is still in the experimental stage, Laboratories scientists and engineers expect that, after the necessary development, it may have far-reaching significance in electronics and electrical communication. Just as the Transistor is not expected to supplant vacuum tubes, but rather to supplement them, so the Phototransistor is not expected to displace existing photo-electric cells. Because of their small size and expected long life, however, together with economies that might reasonably result from mass-production, Phototransistors should find many applications where it is not now practical to use present-day photoelectric devices.
Photograph from the Mark I photo album (Lib.1964). Mark I (Automatic Sequence Controlled... [+]
March 31, 1939
The dedication of the Mark I on August 7, 1944, say historians Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, “captured the imagination of the public to an extraordinary extent and gave headline writers a field day. American Weekly called it ‘Harvard Robot Super-Brain’ and
March 31, 1951
A ceremony in Philadelphia marks the first sale—to the U.S. Census Bureau—of the UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I), the first commercial computer developed in the U.S. The fifth UNIVAC unit (built for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission) was used by CBS to predict the result of the 1952 presidential election. It was the first time two of the major television networks used computers to predict the election results:
“The radio and TV networks hope to end the suspense as quickly as possible on election night …. CBS has arranged to use Univac, an all-electronic automatic computer known familiarly as the ‘Giant Brain.’ Because it is too big (25,000 lbs.) to be moved to Manhattan, CBS will train a TV camera on the machine at Remington Rand’s offices in Philadelphia …. NBC has its own smaller electronic brain … Monrobot …. Says ABC’s News Director John Madigan, professing a disdain for such electronic gimmicks: ‘We’ll report our results through Elmer Davis, John Daly, Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson—and about 20 other human brains.’” –“Univac & Monrobot,” Time Magazine, October 27, 1952.
“When CBS hired a newly minted Univac to analyze the vote in the 1952 presidential election, network officials thought it a nifty publicity stunt. But when the printout appeared, an embarrassed Charles Collingwood reported that the machine couldn’t make up its mind. It was not until after midnight that CBS confessed the truth: Univac had correctly predicted Dwight Eisenhower would swamp Adlai Stevenson in one of the biggest landslides in history, but nobody believed it.” –Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “Television Machines That Think,” Time Magazine, April 6, 1992
April 1, 1976
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne sign a partnership agreement that established the company that will become Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977. Walter Isaacson in Steve Jobs:
Wayne said he had some experience “writing in legalese,” so he composed the three-page document himself…the division of shares and profits was clear—45%--45%--10%--and it was stipulated that any expenditures of more than $100 would require agreement of at least two of the partners. Also, the responsibilities were spelled out. “Wozniak shall assume both general and major responsibility for the conduct of Electrical Engineering; Jobs shall assume general responsibility for Electrical Engineering and Marketing, and Wayne shall assume major responsibility for Mechanical Engineering and Documentation.”…
Wayne then got cold feet… Jobs and Wozniak had no personal assets, but Wayne (who worried about global financial Armageddon) kept gold coins hidden in his mattress. Because they had structured Apple as a simple partnership rather than a corporation, the partners would be personally liable for the debts, and Wayne was afraid potential creditors would go after him. So he returned to the Santa Clara County office just eleven days later with a “statement of withdrawal”… It noted that in payment for his 10% of the company, he received $800, and shortly afterward $1,500 more.
Had he stayed on and kept his 10% stake, at the end of 2010 it would have been worth approximately $2.6 billion. Instead he was then living alone in a small home in Pahrump, Nevada, where he played the penny slot machines and lived off his social security checks. He later claimed he had no regrets. “I made the best decision for me at the time. Both of them were real whirlwinds, and I knew my stomach and it wasn’t ready for such a ride.”
April 1, 1985
Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant launch The WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), one of the first online communities which had a far-reaching impact on the nascent culture of the Internet.
April 1, 2004
Google launches Gmail, as an invitation-only beta. The launch was initially met with wide-spread skepticism due to Google’s long-standing tradition of April Fools’ jokes. Google’s press release said: “Google Gets the Message and Launches Gmail. A user complaint about existing email services lead Google to create search-based Webmail. Search is number two online activity and email is number one: ‘Heck, Yeah,’ said Google Founders.” Gmail officially exited beta status on July 7, 2009 at which time it had 170 million users worldwide. On February 1, 2016, Google announced Gmail has more than 1 billion active monthly users.
April 2, 1902
The first American theater devoted solely to movies opens in Los Angeles. Admission to the 200-seat "Electric Theatre" was a dime. Scott Kirsner in Inventing the Movies:"But the novelty wears off quickly, and after just six months, the proprietor converts the space into a vaudeville theater."
April 3, 1973
Martin Cooper makes the first mobile phone call, using an early model of Motorola’s DynaTAC phone, a phone weighing 2.5 pounds, measuring 9 inches long and 5 inches deep, and featuring about 20 minutes of battery life. Megan Garber in The Atlantic:
Telephones, at that point, were not things you could just carry around with you as you walked. (Cooper liked to joke that the DynaTAC’s limited talk time wasn’t technically a problem — since “you couldn’t hold that phone up for that long.”) So a guy strolling around near Radio City Music Hall, talking animatedly into a large hunk of plastic, was a spectacle. Even for a city that was used to spectacles. “As I walked down the street while talking on the phone,” Cooper would later recall, “sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call.”
And that, of course, was the point. “We wanted to do a dazzling demonstration,” Cooper said. The team’s goal wasn’t just to invent something; it was to let the world know, in as striking a way as possible, that the something had been invented. The demo would end, appropriately, with the technologist processing to the Midtown Hilton, where a gaggle of reporters were assembled for a press conference. Cooper would hand his phone to one of those reporters so she could call her mother in Australia...
The Federal Communications Commission, at the time, was deliberating whether to allow AT&T to set up a network that would provide wireless phone service in local markets, ostensibly for use with car phones. Not only, Cooper knew, would this proposal give AT&T an effective monopoly in those markets; it would also mean that car phones, rather than hand-held, would likely become the dominant mobile technology. Cooper and his colleagues saw where things might be heading -- so they decided to intervene. They charted a new destination, and then set their sights on leading the way there. But they had to hurry.
Rudy Krolopp, lead designer of the device that would become the DynaTAC, recalled the frantic weeks that led, finally, to the cell phone. "Marty called me to his office one day in December 1972 and said, 'We've got to build a portable cell phone,'" Krolopp says. "And I said, 'What the hell's a portable cell phone?'"
They would answer the question by inventing it.
