The birth of the man who gave us the disk drive, Youtube hits 100 million and Amazon opens for business. All on today’s On This Day from TestHuddle.
1906 – Reynold Johnson was born
Reynold Johnson known as the father of the disk drive was born on this day in Palo Alto, California. He was a long tine employee of IBM. In In 1952, IBM sent Johnson to San Jose, California, to set up and manage its West Coast Laboratory. Johnson began working with a research team to develop disk data storage technology. In 1956 his team succeeded. IBM released their end product as the IBM 305 RAMAC. Although crude by modern standards, Johnson’s teams work helped launch a multi-billion industry and the basis of data storage for modern computers.
Johnson also developed the prototype for the video-cassette tape. After his retirement, he was still developing ideas. He produced the micro-phonograph technology for the Fisher Price “Talk to Me Books”. The same technology was used for bird watchers to help identify bird song. By his retirement he held over 90 patents.
1995 – Amazon opens for business
The ecommerce site Amazon.com opens for business. The website is initially run from a converted garage in Bellevue, Washington by founder Jeff Bezos. He developed a system where three SPARC workstations were rigged to ring a bell each time Amazon recorded a sale. The first book sold by the company was Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.
2006 – Youtube daily usage reaches 100 million
It is estimated that around this day in 2006 about 100 million clips are watched daily on Youtube. Today it is estimated that four billion clips are watched daily on the video hosting website.
If you would like to add anything to these events, feel free to comment below.
Images: Computer Hope/shailan.com/Wikipedia
