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DMCA Signed into Law
October 28, 1998 US President Bill Clinton signs into law the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The law is intended to criminalize production and dissemination of technology designed to circumvent digital copyright protection (known as Digital Rights Management or DRM). However, the law has been very controversial, with accusations of abuse of the law to stifle…
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First Major ARPANET Outage
The ARPANET in 1980 October 27, 1980 The ARPANET, the precursor to the modern Internet, stops functioning for about four hours after the network’s routing tables are corrupted by a malfunctioning Interface Message Processor (IMP). The post First Major ARPANET Outage appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day in Tech History Tech…
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Last Flight of the Concorde
October 24, 2003 The Concorde supersonic jet makes its last commercial flight. While being able to cross the Atlantic in about 3.5 hours, low passenger numbers and rising maintenance costs made operating the Concorde unprofitable for British Airways and Air France. The post Last Flight of the Concorde appeared first on This Day in Tech…
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Last Flight of the Concorde
October 24, 2003 The Concorde supersonic jet makes its last commercial flight. While being able to cross the Atlantic in about 3.5 hours, low passenger numbers and rising maintenance costs made operating the Concorde unprofitable for British Airways and Air France. The post Last Flight of the Concorde appeared first on This Day in Tech…
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VisiCalc Officially Released
October 19, 1979 According to Dan Bricklin, the first “real” release of VisiCalc was completed and packaged for shipment. VisiCalc was the first commercially available spreadsheet software and quickly became the first “killer app” of the personal computer market. The post VisiCalc Officially Released appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day in…
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VisiCalc Officially Released
October 19, 1979 According to Dan Bricklin, the first “real” release of VisiCalc was completed and packaged for shipment. VisiCalc was the first commercially available spreadsheet software and quickly became the first “killer app” of the personal computer market. The post VisiCalc Officially Released appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day in…
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NES Hits North America
October 18, 1985 Nintendo releases the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in New York and limited other North American markets. An immediate hit, Nintendo released the game nationwide in February 1986. Along with the NES, Nintendo released eighteen games that day, including: 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Golf, Gyromite,…
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IMDb Launched
October 17, 1990 Colin Needham, an English movie fan, launches the “rec.arts.movies movie database”, which would later be known as the Internet Movie Database, or IMDb. An engineer working for HP at the time, by 1996 Needham quit his job to work on IMDb full-time. The IMDb is one of the most visited sites on…