What Happened Today, February 1st

Mike Sheridan, James Gosling, and Patrick Naughton of Sun Microsystems, Inc. start to develop Java technology. It grew out of a Sun project in embedded control called *7 (Star Seven). Naughton focused on Aspen graphics system, Gosling on programming language ideas, and Sheridan on business development.

Mike Sheridan, James Gosling, and Patrick Naughton of Sun Microsystems, Inc. start to develop Java technology. It grew out of a Sun project in embedded control called *7 (Star Seven). Naughton focused on Aspen graphics system, Gosling on programming language ideas, and Sheridan on business development.

Gil Amelio is named CEO of Apple Computer, replacing Michael Spindler, whose management of the company in the previous three years had led to the layoff of 1,300 employees and severe financial losses. Amelio lasted about a year and a half in the position before leaving. Co-founder Steve Jobs replaced him and led Apple back into profitability with its iMac and G3 machines.

Time magazine reports on frustrations with the slow development of software for use in the computer industry. Reporter Philip Elmer-DeWitt complained about delays in Microsoft Corporation's new Windows operating system, which had been delayed much longer than promised. Silicon Valley pundits had taken to calling such software "Vaporware," the magazine noted.

Kenneth Thompson, who with Dennis Ritchie developed UNIX at AT&T Bell Laboratories, is born. The UNIX operating system combined many of the timesharing and file management features offered by Multics, from which it took its name. (Multics, a projects of the mid - 1960s, represented the first effort at creating a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system.) The UNIX operating system quickly secured a wide following, particularly among engineers and scientists.

John Mauchly sends a letter to his partner, J. Presper Eckert, complaining that little progress had been made in ensuring that their new company—Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp.—would be successful. The two computing pioneers had founded the company a few months earlier. Mauchly wrote: "The more I think about the situation in which we find ourselves at present, the more I am convinced that we are losing a hell of a lot of valuable time [because] we are slow in making necessary decisions."

Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments files a patent application called "miniaturized electronic circuits" for his work on a multi-transistor device. The patent was only one of 60 that Kilby holds. While Kilby has the earliest patent on the "integrated circuit," it was Robert Noyce, later co-founder of Intel, whose parallel work resulted in a practical device. Kilby's device had several transistors connected by flying wires while Noyce devised the idea of interconnection via a layer of metal conductors. Noyce also adapted Jean Hoerni's planar technique for making transistors to the manufacture of more complex circuits.

Doug Ross presents a paper on gestalt programming at the Western Joint Computer Conference in Los Angeles. Ross had experimented with the programming while working for the Air Force and Emerson Electric Co.

C.D Lake, H.H. Aiken, F.E. Hamilton, and B.M. Durfee file a calculator patent for the Automatic Sequence Control Calculator, commonly known as the Harvard Mark I. The Mark I was a large automatic digital computer that could perform the four basic arithmetic functions and handle 23 decimal places. A multiplication took about five seconds.