What Happened Today, May 24th

Wes Clark began his work on LINC, or the Laboratory Instrument Computer, at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. His plan was to create a computer for biomedical research, that was easy to program and maintain, that could be communicated with while it operated, and that could process biotechnical signals directly. Building on his previous experience in developing the Whirlwind, TX-0, and other early computers, Clark set to work on one of the earliest examples of a "user friendly" machine -- setting the standard for personal computer design in the following decades.

Wes Clark began his work on LINC, or the Laboratory Instrument Computer, at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. His plan was to create a computer for biomedical research, that was easy to program and maintain, that could be communicated with while it operated, and that could process biotechnical signals directly. Building on his previous experience in developing the Whirlwind, TX-0, and other early computers, Clark set to work on one of the earliest examples of a "user friendly" machine -- setting the standard for personal computer design in the following decades.

CERN hosted the first international World Wide Web conference, which continued through May 27. At the conference, researchers expanded on Tim Berners-Lee's concept of a single storage facility for a variety of information -- a design that would greatly aid his research at CERN, where he previously had to use a number of different programs and locations to collect what he needed. While participants understood the usefulness of Berners-Lee's concept and HyperText Markup Language, few guessed how quickly the Web would expand to millions of users globally.

Realizing his company had missed the boat in estimating the impact and popularity of the Internet, Microsoft Corp. CEO Bill Gates issued a memo titled, "The Internet Tidal Wave," which signaled the company's renewed focus on that arena. In the memo, Gates declared that the Internet was the "most important single development" since the IBM personal computer -- a development that he was assigning "the highest level of importance."

After almost a decade of service, MIT shut down its Whirlwind computer. The machine debuted on Edward R. Murrow's See It Now television series in 1951, showing off its quick speed and large memory compared to other systems at the time. Project director Jay Forrester described the computer as a "reliable operating system," running 35 hours a week at 90-percent utility using an electrostatic tube memory.

A committee formed to develop COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language. The group of researchers drawn from several computer manufacturers and the Pentagon designed a program for business use that sought easy readability and as much machine independence as possible. Although programmer Howard Bromberg prematurely made a tombstone for COBOL out of fear that the language had no future, it continues to be used by businesses today. The tombstone is now part of the Computer History Museum's collection.

The Eastman Kodak Co. introduced an electronic publishing system called Ektaprint Electronic Publishing System, designed to allow companies to edit, print, and update text and graphics for publications. The $50,000 system included parts designed by Sun Microsystems Inc., Canon Inc., and Interleaf Inc. in an early version of what now is available to any computer user for a few hundred dollars.

AT&T held a meeting to announce a system that would allow personal computers to make and receive video phone calls over standard telephone lines. In years of efforts by AT&T and others to find success in the technology, the AT&T system made use of Intel's Pentium processors and compression software to allow both video and audio information to share a phone line rather than a high-capacity ISDN, T-1, or T-3 line.

BASIC co-developer John Kemeny was born in Budapest, Hungary. In his 66-year life, Kemeny had a significant impact on the history of computers, particularly during his years at Dartmouth College, where he worked with Thomas Kurtz to create BASIC, an easy-to-use programming language for his computer students. Kemeny earlier had worked with John von Neumann in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during the Manhattan Project years of World War II.