What Happened Today, July 26th

AT&T Corp. and Microsoft Corp. announced an alliance to promote Microsoft's World Wide Web browser, Internet Explorer, in a move designed to allow both giants to gain easier entrance into the burgeoning Internet business sphere. Under the deal, AT&T and Microsoft agreed to promote and distribute jointly Internet Explorer and AT&T's Internet service. The deal represented AT&T's move to expand its long-distance telephone service and another effort by Microsoft to offset its late entry into online computing software, a misstep that allowed Netscape Communications Corp. to dominate browser technology.

AT&T Corp. and Microsoft Corp. announced an alliance to promote Microsoft's World Wide Web browser, Internet Explorer, in a move designed to allow both giants to gain easier entrance into the burgeoning Internet business sphere. Under the deal, AT&T and Microsoft agreed to promote and distribute jointly Internet Explorer and AT&T's Internet service. The deal represented AT&T's move to expand its long-distance telephone service and another effort by Microsoft to offset its late entry into online computing software, a misstep that allowed Netscape Communications Corp. to dominate browser technology.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara argued that computers could have saved fashion designer Gianni Versace, murdered earlier that summer by Andrew Cunanan. "If the Miami Beach Police Department had computer technology as sophisticated as that used in one of the town's trendy restaurants," McNamara wrote, "fashion designer Gianni Versace would probably still be alive." He noted, however, that few police departments have the necessary technology. Police had received information on Cunanan earlier in the week from a pawnbroker, but at the time of Versace's death, it remained in paper format waiting to be entered into the computer system.

Dell Computer Corp. announced its entry into the workstation market with the Dell Workstation 400. The move to the more powerful desktop computers, most commonly used for engineering, followed Dell's entry into the network server industry as it expanded from personal desktop computers and laptops in order to grab a larger part of the market. Dell offered its workstations for $3,000 to $8,000.

In an example of the fast-growing Internet software industry, Mpath Interactive acquired Catapult Entertainment Inc. in an effort to establish itself in the online video game business. Neither company had been in business for more than a few years, nor had the online game industry, which has taken off with the availability of software to network computers so users can compete against each other in video games across wide distances.

Iconoscope inventor Vladimir Zworykin was born in Russia. After emigrating to Pittsburgh, Zworykin took a job at Westinghouse Electric Corp., where in 1923 he filed a patent for the iconoscope, the first television transmission tube and a technology that was to become of interest to early computer designers. With a later invention, the kinescope, Zworykin was able to create the first all-electric television system. Zworykin took the technology to RCA in 1929, where he continued his work and earned the title "father of television."

SGI Chief Operating Officer Tom Jermoluk resigned to become CEO of @Home, a company building a high-speed backbone for transmission of information over the Internet. Jermoluk's move showed the turmoil still present at Silicon Graphics, which had been one of the star computer software companies before seeming to take a number of missteps that made its profits plunge and its management fluid.

The US Navy recalls Captain Grace Murray Hopper to active duty to help develop the programming language COBOL. With a team drawn from several computer manufacturers and the Pentagon, Hopper - who had worked on the Mark I and II computers at Harvard in the 1940s - created the specifications for COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) with business uses in mind. These early COBOL efforts aimed at creating easily-readable computer programs with as much machine independence as possible. Designers hoped a COBOL program would run on any computer for which a compiler existed with only minimal modifications.

Hopper made many major contributions to computer science throughout her very long career, including what is likely the first compiler ever written, "A-0." She appears to have also been the first to coin the word "bug" in the context of computer science, taping into her logbook a moth which had fallen into a relay of the Harvard Mark II computer. She died on January 1, 1992.

The US Navy commissioned their most advanced ship, the USS Hopper (DDG 70), on September 6, 1997 named in honor of Grace Hopper.

Mina Spiegel Rees was born in Ohio and became one of the earliest female computer pioneers. Before her death in 1997, Rees would leave her mark in the worlds of computers, mathematics, and education. Rees graduated with degrees in mathematics from Hunter College and Columbia University and ran the Office of Naval Research (ONR) after World War II, where she organized work on early computers such as the Harvard Mark I. Throughout her career, she made many important contributions to the use of computers in solving applied mathematical problems and was known for her strong administrative skills and influence.

In 1970, she became the first female president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Rees died on October 25, 1997 at age 95.