1983– The Trash-80, as it was so admirably called in the day, a.k.a. the TRS-80 Model 4 is introduced. It contains a 4 MHz processor, 16 KB of RAM, a cassette interface, Keyboard and Monochrome monitor. $1000 for the base model, or $2000 if you upgraded the RAM to 64 KB and 5.25 disk drives. The first TRS-80 was released in 1977.

1980 – Activision was technically founded in 1979, but it wasn’t until April 25 that the “Fantastic Four” joined up as the first third-party software company for video games. David Crane and Alan Miller left Atari August 1979 to start programming under the Activision name. Larry Kaplan and Bob Whitehead stayed behind until April 25th when Activision came out. Richard Muchmore was the venture capitalist and Jim Levy rounded the group as Activision’s CEO.

1984 – Apple introduces the Apple IIc, their answer to a portable machine. It weighed 7 1/2 lbs and featured a 1.023MHz CPU and 128 KB RAM. $1,295. The device device had a built-in floppy and peripheral expansion ports. This was a closed system – no expansion slots to plug in cards. It was deemed an appliance computer, which meant was ready to go when you pulled it out of the box.

Other Events in the Day in Technology History

1964– The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) is retired after fifteen years. SEAC was the first to use all-diode logic. SEAC was bason on EDVAC. It had 747 vacuum tubes, and the clock rate was under 1 mHz.

<img width="333" height="366" data-tf-not-load src="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/mosaic.gif" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="Mosaic Web Browser" decoding="async" />

1993 – The National Center for Supercomputing Applications releases version 1.0 (RTM) of the Mosaic Web Browser. It was the first browser with a Graphical user interface for content. Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark were the lead developers. The browser would take the internet by storm and continue to lead until 1998 when IE and Netscape came on the scene.

Mosaic was originally released in Beta (0.1) on January 23, 1993 – as a post in the newsgroup indicate**

Here is the official RTM thread

**Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 07:21:17 -0800

From: ma…@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)

By the power vested in me by nobody in particular, alpha/beta version

location removed

This release of X Mosaic is known to compile on the following

SGI (IRIX 4.0.2)

Binaries for these platforms are available on ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in

Although this is alpha/beta software, I’m looking more for feedback on design and functionality than bug reports right now — down the road

A list of current and future capabilities of X Mosaic follows this

Cheers,

—

<img width="640" height="360" data-tf-not-load src="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ht_microsoft_cc_120823_wg1.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="Microsoft Logo" decoding="async" srcset="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ht_microsoft_cc_120823_wg1.jpg 640w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ht_microsoft_cc_120823_wg1-300x168.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />

1977 – Two days prior, Microsoft send MITS a letter with the allegation that they were not up on royalty payments and if they didn’t catch up, MITS would be in breach and the 8080 BASIC would be pulled. MITS sends a letter stating that they are not correct. Ultimately, this would begin a debate that would end in November when Microsoft pulled the 8080 BASIC out.

<img width="600" height="600" data-tf-not-load src="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/oracle-day-in-tech-history.png" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="Oracle" decoding="async" srcset="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/oracle-day-in-tech-history.png 600w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/oracle-day-in-tech-history-150x150.png 150w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/oracle-day-in-tech-history-300x300.png 300w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/oracle-day-in-tech-history-65x65.png 65w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

2009 – Oracle announces they have purchased Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion dollar deal. This includes stock at $9.50 / share. That would also be the acquisition of SPARC processors, Solaris OS, Java and MySQL, among other items. The deal would be finalized on January 27th 2010.

<img width="380" height="380" data-tf-not-load src="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HP_PDA1.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="PDA" decoding="async" srcset="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HP_PDA1.jpg 380w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HP_PDA1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HP_PDA1-300x300.jpg 300w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HP_PDA1-65x65.jpg 65w" sizes="(max-width: 380px) 100vw, 380px" />

2000– Before smartphones, Personal Digital Assistants were the device to have. You could store contacts, write memos, set up, read and send email and even play a nice game of Solitaire, or the game where you eliminated color marbles. I – in my IT career – not only had a Palm III, but also ran with an iPAQ 3650, Handspring Visor and Jornada. Well, while this was not the first handheld, we would see a day where many vendors would release the new versions of their devices. It all hovered around Microsoft and their release – the Pocket PC specification: Windows CE 3.0 with mobile IE, Windows Music Player and Mobile Word. Compaq then releases the iPAQ, HP releases the Jornada 545 and Casio introduced the Cassiopeia E-115.

<img width="500" height="500" data-tf-not-load src="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/HD-DVD-DITH.png" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="HD DVD format" decoding="async" srcset="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/HD-DVD-DITH.png 500w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/HD-DVD-DITH-150x150.png 150w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/HD-DVD-DITH-300x300.png 300w, https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/HD-DVD-DITH-65x65.png 65w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" />

2006 – Toshiba launches the HD DVD format in the US. The first HD DVD players were the HD-A1 and HD-XA1. RCA would rebrand the A1 to the HDV-5000. The first HD DVD with TrueHD soundtrack was the Phantom of the Opera.

<img width="320" height="75" data-tf-not-load src="https://dayintechhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/logo_web_11.gif" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="Terraserver" decoding="async" />

2000 – Five arial images of Area 51 are leaked onto Terraserver from a Russian satellite called “Sovinformsputnik. The amount of traffic that went to the site brought the server down, so they had to take the photos off until they could handle the traffic.