What Happened Today, April 15th

The first West Coast Computer Faire begins, introducing personal computers, in both kit and assembled form, to a new audience--the general public. It was an important year for personal computing as three of the most popular personal computing systems of all time were announced then: the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the Radio Shack TRS-80. The Faire, held at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium & Brooks Hall, exposed tens of thousands of enthusiasts and the curious to a coming revolution in computing that would change all of our lives. The first Faire is one of the most significant events in the history of personal computing.

The HP-41 calculator is used on board NASA's first space shuttle flight. The HP-41 allowed astronauts to calculate the exact angle at which they needed to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.

Stan Ulam, a mathematician who did early theoretical work on the use of computers in mathematics, is born in Poland. Ulam teaches at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin before joining the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he meets John von Neumann. There, Ulam and von Neumann discuss using computers to understand questions of pure mathematics. Based on the ENIAC experience, Ulam suggested to von Neumann that neutron diffusion and related chain reactions were natural applications and just as quickly outlined a procedure to implement the notion.

The Chinese government launches widespread efforts to purge governmental agencies of illegally copied software, a practice that had been costing US software publishers millions of dollars. The plan calls for allotting more money to purchase software while giving an enforcement agency the power to prosecute anyone bootlegging software. The announcement follows a March meeting at which China had signed an accord with the United States vowing to crackdown on piracy.

The first West Coast Computer Faire begins, introducing personal computers, in both kit and assembled form, to a new audience--the general public. It was an important year for personal computing as three of the most popular personal computing systems of all time were announced then: the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and the Radio Shack TRS-80. The Faire, held at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium & Brooks Hall, exposed tens of thousands of enthusiasts and the curious to a coming revolution in computing that would change all of our lives. The first Faire is one of the most significant events in the history of personal computing.

The programming language that provided the basis for work in artificial intelligence, LISP, has its first public presentation. Created by John McCarthy, LISP offers programmers flexibility in organization and it or its descendants are still used in the AI development environment.

Harvard University President James Conant writes to IBM founder Thomas Watson Sr. to let him know that the Harvard Mark I, developed in cooperation between the two, was operating smoothly. The project was one of the many examples of wartime collaboration among the federal government, universities, and private corporations. In his letter, Conant noted that the Mark I already was "being used for special problems in connection with the war effort."

Newspapers report that IBM had become the first computer manufacturer to use a megabit chip -- a memory chip capable of storing 1 million bits of information -- in a commercial product, its Model 3090. The announcement is heralded as a notable triumph for American computer makers, whose work had been perceived as having fallen behind that of the Japanese electronics industry.