What Happened on January 24th
IBM dedicates the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC). Later the SSEC was put on public display near the company's Manhattan headquarters so passers-by could watch its operational speed. Before its decommissioning in 1952, the SSEC produced the moon-position tables used for plotting the course of the 1969 Apollo flight to the moon.
Apple Computer, Inc. released its Macintosh computer with an unprecedented media campaign, including a groundbreaking TV commercial shown during the 1984 Super Bowl. Selling for about 2,500 dollars, the Mac used a Motorola 68000 microprocessor and had 128k of RAM (memory). The Macintosh's graphical user interface (GUI) was revolutionary and led to its rapid adoption in education, desktop publishing and graphic design. Early sales were brisk, with 70,000 units sold in the first one hundred days after its introduction.