David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Fairchild isn’t the first name that comes to mind when it comes to video games. Consumer electronics wasn’t really their thing, and that might explain why they lost interest after only 3 years. But it’s easy to forget just how much of a disruptive force in the technology industry Fairchild was. In this blog post, we’ll explore Fairchild’s brief foray into video game consoles in the 1970s and its lasting influence that we’re still feeling today.
In November 1983, Tandy introduced the Tandy 2000, a forward-looking PC that tried to be better than IBM. The problem was the Tandy 2000 was IBM-like, but fell too far short of being fully IBM compatible.
On November 26, 1976, Microsoft registered its name as a trademark. At the time, Microsoft was still headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It didn’t move to the Seattle area until 1979.
Babbage’s was a software retailer that operated storefronts in closed-air shopping malls. It opened its first store in NorthPark Center in Dallas on Memorial Day, May 30, 1983. By mid 1994, it operated 320 stores in 40 states, Puerto Rico, and Canada, but by 1996, it fell on hard times. Barnes & Noble chairman Leonard Riggio bought the company November 27, 1996.
On November 24, 1998, America Online purchased Netscape, the pioneering web browser maker and dotcom darling, for $4.2 billion. In this blog post, we will try to figure out why AOL bought Netscape.
It was November 22, 1987, that the most notorious unsolved pirate television broadcast happened in Chicago. It was the Max Headroom incident.
The Tandy 2000 was aptly named. It was twice as good as the Tandy 1000 in nearly every way. But it wasn’t even half as successful. In this blog post, I will explain how the Tandy 2000’s commercial failure and its reliance on Microsoft Windows set the tone for subsequent Tandy computers and perhaps even doomed the whole product line.
The Tandy 1000 wasn’t Tandy’s first foray into the IBM PC compatible market. That was the Tandy 2000, released in November 1983. But in late 1983, Tandy started preparing the Tandy 1000, a home and education-oriented PC aimed at the lower end of the market, to compete with the IBM PCjr. First released in mid November 1984, it became a bestseller and spawned three generations of Tandy 1000 models, surviving on the market until 1992.
It was 62 years ago, on November 18, 1963, that the push button telephone, or touch tone phone, was first introduced.