Tech Time Warp is a weekly feature that looks back at interesting moments and milestones in tech history.
Tag: Tech Time Warp
Tech Time Warp: A quick look back at QuickTime’s beginnings
Tech Time Warp: A quick look back at QuickTime’s beginnings
For today’s Mac user, QuickTime is nothing special—just part of the base package, lost among other bells and whistles. But travel back to this week in December 1991, when consumers got their first taste of QuickTime 1.0, and you’ll understand...
Tech Time Warp: The Surprisingly Long History of the MP3
Tech Time Warp: The Surprisingly Long History of the MP3
In May, the creators of the MP3 called time of death on their revolutionary file format. The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany announced that its licensing program for MP3-related patents—the first of which was issued in the United States on Nov....
Tech Time Warp: The Confounding Case of Conficker
Tech Time Warp: The Confounding Case of Conficker
One of the most insidious worms of all time made its debut Nov. 21, 2008, and it’s still alive and kicking today. Conficker continues to spread, thanks to installations of the beloved but now out-of-support Windows XP. Eleven million devices...
Tech Time Warp: Happy birthday to a father of timesharing computing
Tech Time Warp: Happy birthday to a father of timesharing computing
Cloud computing might seem like a modern convenience, but its roots lie in the timesharing computers developed at MIT in the 1960s. Project MAC was directed by Italian-American computer pioneer Robert Fano, born on Nov. 11, 1917. Funded by the...
Tech Time Warp: Morris worm exposes Internet security issues
Tech Time Warp: Morris worm exposes Internet security issues
The morning of Nov. 3, 1988, the Internet discovered stranger danger thanks to a 24-year-old grad student whose intellectual curiosity got out of hand. The Morris worm was the creation of Cornell University student Robert Tappan Morris Jr. and provided...
Tech Time Warp: The ARPANET crash of 1980
Tech Time Warp: The ARPANET crash of 1980
A network-wide crash equals one of the worst work days ever, right? Hopefully you won’t be faced with one anytime soon, but if you are, take solace in the knowledge that they’ve always been a problem. On Oct. 27, 1980,...
Tech Time Warp: Tennis for Two, the World’s First Video Game
Tech Time Warp: Tennis for Two, the World’s First Video Game
Today’s gaming vloggers owe a lot to a nuclear physicist. On Oct. 18, 1958, during Brookhaven National Laboratory’s annual visitors’ day, attendees played “Tennis for Two,” considered by many to be the world’s first video game. Brookhaven physicist William Higinbotham...
Tech Time Warp: Steve Jobs’ NeXT Move
Tech Time Warp: Steve Jobs’ NeXT Move
If someone tells you the NeXT computer was “Steve Jobs’ biggest failure,” consider that person uninformed (or a purveyor of clickbait). After all, if you’re reading this blog post on an Apple device, you’re benefiting from Jobs’ NeXT-level thinking. Like...
Tech Time Warp: Happy Birthday to Microsoft Word
Tech Time Warp: Happy Birthday to Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is so synonymous with office life it’s hard to consider it groundbreaking. But next time you’re plodding through TPS reports, think back to October 1983, when word processing wasn’t quite so easy. A lucky few had access to...
Tech Time Warp: Copyright protection for computer code
Tech Time Warp: Copyright protection for computer code
Sept. 22, 1986, marked a milestone in a protracted legal battle between Intel and NEC Corp. over copyright protection of computer code. As they fought for control of the microprocessor market, the two semiconductor companies—Intel American, and NEC Corp. Japanese—found...
