#tech trivia

On March 9, 1955, a program called "Director" was demonstrated on MIT's Whirlwind computer—automatically managing system resources while user code ran. It's considered one of the earliest rudimentary operating systems ever created.

Whirlwind was already five years old at the time, but this simple addition changed how humans and computers would talk forever.

He did get some recognition in 2023, when a blue plaque went up at Dollis Hill in London, the former Post Office research site where he built Colossus using mostly spare telephone parts.

That chance encounter sparked a friendship that led Ada to write what is now recognized as the world's first computer program, over a decade before the word "computer" referred to anything other than a person doing sums.

On May 21, 1952, IBM announced its first electronic computer, the Model 701, at a time when the company was better known as the world's largest supplier of punched card equipment, with chairman Thomas Watson Sr. so resistant to the idea that engineers had to rebrand it a "Defense Calculator" just to get it built.

This was a pivotal moment in technology history, as it ensured that the Web would be an open standard that anyone could use, build upon, and distribute without paying licensing fees or royalties.

On April 8, 1991, a small team at Sun Microsystems quietly relocated to work in secret on a project codenamed "Oak", a programming language that would eventually be renamed Java and go on to become one of the most widely used languages in the world, powering everything from Android apps to enterprise software.