A guide to the historic events that happened on this day in computer and technology history; a software bug in space and IBM launch a desktop computer.
1962 – Software Bug in Space
A software bug in the flight software of the Mariner I space probe causes the rocket to divert from its intended path on launch. The rocket was inteneded to make a fly-by of Venus but Mission control is forced to destroy the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. A later investigation reveals that the loss of control of the probe was because of code written on paper in pencil was improperly transcribed into computer code.
1981 – IBM First Desktop Computer
IBM announces its first desktop computer, the System/23 Datamaster. The computer was developed by Bill Sydnes and others and based on Intel’s 8086 16-bit processor. The system features a 16-bit 8086 processor, a viewing screen, up to 4.4MB of diskette storage, and Business Management Accounting and Word Processing programmes. The Datamaster retails for $9,830 and is IBM’s lowest-priced small business system. The machine is launched just a few weeks before the announcement of the IBM PC.
Images: Nasa.com, Wikipedia.
