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Like the Volkswagen Beetle and modern freeway systems, the Telex messaging network comes out of the early period of Germany’s Third Reich.
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In 1939, Bell Telephone Laboratories completes this calculator, designed by scientist George Stibitz. In 1940, Stibitz demonstrated the CNC at an American Mathematical Society conference held at Dartmouth College. Stibitz stunned the group by performing calculations remotely on the CNC (located in New York City) using a Teletype terminal connected via to New York over special telephone lines. This is likely the first example of remote access computing.
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One of the first commercially produced computers, the company´s first customer was the US Navy.
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A team drawn from several computer manufacturers and the Pentagon develop COBOL—an acronym for Common Business-Oriented Language. Many of its specifications borrow heavily from the earlier FLOW-MATIC language. Designed for business use, early COBOL efforts aimed for easy readability of computer programs and as much machine independence as possible.
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Gene Amdahl, father of the IBM System/360, starts his own company, Amdahl Corporation, to compete with IBM in mainframe computer systems.
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Commodore releases the VIC-20 home computer as the successor to the Commodore PET personal computer. Intended to be a less expensive alternative to the PET, the VIC-20 was highly successful, becoming the first computer to sell more than a million units.
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“Sawmill” disk drive cutaway IBM 9345 hard disk drive
Memory & Storage
IBM's 9345 hard disk drive is introduced. Codenamed "Sawmill," it was the first hard disk drive to use magneto-resistive heads. Magneto-resistive heads gave the 9345 an advantage over its competitors, as the bits could be stored more densely. -
While most games see a player working towards an end-game scenario, The Sims allows players to create a home, get a job, and form relationships in a free-form world. Designed by a team at Maxis led by Wil Wright, The Sims took concepts from Wright's previous game Sim City.
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As touchscreen-enabled tablets and smartphones proliferate, mobile games became top-sellers. In Angry Birds, players slingshot wingless birds of various kinds towards towers inhabited by green pigs in an effort to knock them to the ground.
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