What Happened Today, September 8th

Star Trek, the science fiction television series, was created by Gene Roddenberry. Set in the 23rd century, the original Star Trek follows the adventures of the starship Enterprise and its crew, led by Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner), his First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and his Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Star Trek was not an immediate hit and was initially broadcast for only three seasons (a total of 79 episodes). Many of the technologies shown in the series, including the “Tricorder” and personal communicator, influenced a generation of technologists working in portable communications and computing. The last episode aired on September 2, 1969.

Star Trek, the science fiction television series, was created by Gene Roddenberry. Set in the 23rd century, the original Star Trek follows the adventures of the starship Enterprise and its crew, led by Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner), his First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and his Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Star Trek was not an immediate hit and was initially broadcast for only three seasons (a total of 79 episodes). Many of the technologies shown in the series, including the “Tricorder” and personal communicator, influenced a generation of technologists working in portable communications and computing. The last episode aired on September 2, 1969.

On September 9, 1947, a team of computer scientists and engineers reported a moth caught between the relay contacts of the Harvard Mark II computer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They taped the dead moth into the logbook for the computer. “First actual case of bug being found,” one of the team members wrote in the log. Programmer Grace Hopper -- a CHM Fellow (1987) -- was present and made the incident famous later on in her many public lectures. Originating with Thomas Edison in the 1800s, the term “bug” is still used widely to describe a mistake or failure in a technical system.

Charles Simonyi, whose work as chief architect of Microsoft Word is born in Budapest, Hungary. After moving to the United States for study at the University of California, Berkeley, Simonyi took a job at the Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, developing the first WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word-processing editor. Later, at Microsoft, he integrated such theories into Word and Multiplan, the predecessor of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

The first public demonstration of remote computation occurs during a meeting of the American Mathematical Society at Dartmouth College. Bell Laboratories researcher George Stibitz set up a terminal that allowed conference attendees to perform remote calculations over telephone lines with Bell Labs’ Complex Number Calculator in New York City. Stibitz had first tested the connection on September 9, an event memorialized by a plaque in front of McNutt Hall at Dartmouth College.

Jack Kilby successfully tests the first integrated circuit at Texas Instruments to prove that resistors and capacitors could exist on the same piece of semiconductor material. His circuit consisted of a sliver of germanium with five components linked by wires. Along with Bob Noyce, he is considered the inventor of the integrated circuit (IC).

Osborne Computer declares bankruptcy, two years after producing the first portable computer, the 24-pound Osborne I. Designed by company founder Adam Osborne, the $1,795 machine included software worth about $1,500. The machine featured a 5-inch display, 64 kilobytes of memory, a modem, and two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives

In April 1981, Byte Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Morgan mentioned the Osborne I in an article on "Future Trends in Personal Computing." He wrote: "I recently had an opportunity to see the Osborne I in action. I was impressed with it's compactness: it will fit under an airplane seat. (Adam Osborne is currently seeking approval from the FAA to operate the unit on board a plane.) One quibble: the screen may be too small for some people's taste."

Bank of America accepts the ERMA (Electronic Recording Method of Accounting) system. This revolutionary system digitized checking for the Bank of America by creating a computer-readable font. A special scanner read account numbers preprinted on checks in magnetic ink. The system was developed at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is founded. With more than 100,000 members from over 100 countries as of 2014, ACM organizes conferences and educational workshops to exchange information on computing technology.