February 15, 1946
The Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) is formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania.
Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley and Crispin Rope write in the just-published ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer:
ENIAC established the feasibility of high-speed electronic computing, demonstrating that a machine containing many thousands of unreliable vacuum tubes could nevertheless be coaxed into uninterrupted operation for long enough to do something useful.
During an operational life of almost a decade ENIAC did a great deal more than merely inspire the next wave of computer builders. Until 1950 it was the only fully electronic computer working in the United States, and it was irresistible to many governmental and corporate users whose mathematical problems required a formerly infeasible amount of computational work. By October of 1955, when ENIAC was decommissioned, scores of people had learned to program and operate it, many of whom went on to distinguished computing careers.
The inimitable Edward C. Berkeley wrote about the ENIAC in his 1949 Giant Brains or Machines that Think:
In the short space of four years, Eniac grew to maturity, and in February 1946 started to earn his own living by electronic thinking. Eniac promptly set several world’s records. He was the first giant brain to use electronic tubes for calculating. He was the first one to reach the speed of 5000 additions a second. He was the first piece of electronic apparatus containing as many as 18,000 electronic tubes all functioning together successfully. … at the Ballistic Research Laboratories, for a typical week of actual work, Eniac has already proved to be equal to 500 human computers working 40 hours with desk calculating machines.
In the same vain, and the same year, Waldemar Kaempffert reported in The New York Times:
Crude in comparison with brains as the computing machines may be that solve in a few seconds mathematical problems that would ordinarily take hours, they behave as if they had a will of their own. In fact, the talk at the meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers was half electronics, half physiology. One scientist excused the absence of a colleague, the inventor of a new robot, with the explanation that "he couldn’t bear to leave the machine at home alone" just as if it were a baby.
On February 15, 2011,
The last bit, of course, is stored in “his” memory under the category “Oscar Wilde.”
February 16, 1978
The first public dial-up Bulletin Board System, the Computerized Bulletin Board System, or CBBS, goes online.
It was developed by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess and reportedly connected more than 250,000 callers before it was finally retired with the rise of the World Wide Web. According to Wikipedia, “Ward Christensen coined the term ‘Bulletin Board System’ as a reference to the traditional cork-and-pin bulletin board often found in entrances of supermarkets, schools, libraries or other public areas where people can post messages, advertisements, or community news.
“Early BBSes were often a local phenomenon, as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay additional long distance charges for a BBS out of the local calling area. Thus, many users of a given BBS usually lived in the same area, and activities such as BBS Meets or Get-Togethers, where many users of the board would gather and meet face to face, were common.”
Today, a BBS (PTT) is the largest online forum in Taiwan, with more than 1.5 million registered users.
February 17, 1977
13-year-old Jonathan Rotenberg establishes the Boston Computer Society (BCS), an organization for personal computer users which will eventually grow into the largest such organization in the world. Four people attended the first meeting of the BCS which, at its peak, reached thirty thousand members from all 50 states and over forty other countries.
From the New York Times in 1987:
Jonathan Rotenberg, president of the Boston Computer Society, tells a story about the day he met Steven Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer. They were riding in a cab in Boston when Mr. Jobs abruptly warned that the computer society would not survive another few years. Mr. Rotenberg asked why. ”Jobs said,” Mr. Rotenberg recalled, “‘We’re making computers as easy to use as clothes dryers. And have you ever heard of a Maytag users group?’ ”
”Well, that was 1981,” Mr. Rotenberg adds. ”Steve Jobs was soon out of a job, but the B.C.S. is doing just fine.”
February 18, 1911
Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters flying from Allahabad to Naini, India, about 10 kilometers away. That was one day after Fred Wiseman took off with mail from Petaluma to Santa Rosa, California in the first United States Post Office-sanctioned airmail flight.
February 19, 1971
The first warrant to search a computer is issued in San Jose, California. The search ultimately led to a conviction for theft of trade secrets. Although the requirements for obtaining such a warrant were similar to those for searching a home, they ushered in a new era that would lead to increasingly sophisticated methods of encryption to hide computer files from law enforcement agents.
February 20, 1947
Alan Turing gives a talk at the London Mathematical Society in which he describes the Automatic Computing Engine (
February 21, 1878
George Willard Coy and a group of investors from the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut, publish the world’s first telephone directory, a single sheet with only 50 names.
