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Through "Today in History", the future can be seen from the past, and the future can also be changed from the present.
Today is April 11, 2023. On this day in 1953, Andrew Wiles was born. Around 1637, the French scholar Fermat proposed a theorem related to mathematical algebra. Since Fermat did not write down the proof, and his other conjectures contributed a lot to mathematics, this inspired many mathematicians to study this conjecture. interest, but no one has been able to prove it for more than three hundred years.
It was not until the 1990s that the British mathematician Wiles officially announced to the world that he had proved Fermat's Last Theorem; when Wiles was a graduate student, his academic direction happened to be elliptic curves, and his process of proving Fermat's Theorem is full of More than a hundred pages of paper have completed this thick stroke in the history of mathematics. Looking back on April 11 in computer history, what key events happened on this day?
April 11, 1948: Lawrence Rowe, founding director of the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, is born
Lawrence A. Rowe (born April 11, 1948) is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, where he retired in June 2003 after 27 years at UC Berkeley , during which he engaged in various activities including developing streaming software, consulting with multimedia research labs, and investing in start-up companies. Early in his career, he worked on database systems and development tools, and a paper he and his students presented at the first ACM Multimedia Conference in 1993 was selected to have an impact on the research community over the next decade. One of the most influential papers.
Roll was also the founding director of the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center (BMRC), created in 1995 to explore the use of multimedia technologies in education and research. The BMRC teaches multimedia authoring courses, builds and operates authoring studios and distributed collaborative and distance learning classrooms, and provides technical support on a variety of issues related to multimedia systems and applications. The Berkeley Webcast was an outgrowth of the research center; in 2002, when funding to support the center ended, the BMRC officially closed.
After leaving Berkeley, Lawrence Rolle served as President of FX Palo Alto Research Laboratory (FXPAL) beginning in April 2007, before stepping down as Chairman/CEO in October 2013. FXPAL is Xerox's multimedia research laboratory located in Palo Alto, California, USA. The lab focuses on multimedia systems and applications, interactive multimedia document authoring, storage, search and analysis, and distributed collaboration. The external core competitiveness of the laboratory is man-machine interface and multimedia technology.
Professor Roll received many awards and honors throughout his life. For his leadership of the development of the Berkeley Lecture Webcasting System, he was a co-recipient of the 2002 UC Technology Leadership Council Larry L. Sautter Award for Innovation in Information Technology; in 2007, Rohr received the UC Irvine Donald Bren Information and School of Computer Science Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2009, he received the ACM SIGMM Technical Achievement Award, which recognizes lifetime research achievements in multimedia systems and applications.
Source: Wikipedia
April 11, 1976: Apple I design is completed
Apple I, a desktop computer designed and hand-built by famed programmer and Apple co-founder Stephen Wozniak, was Apple Computer's first product. In the 1970s, Woz created the Apple I and Apple II computers and was hailed as "the engineer who pushed computers into the homes of the masses"; Woz has many nicknames, such as The Woz, Wonderful Wizard of Woz, iWoz.
On March 5, 1975, Wozniak and his friend Jobs attended the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in Gordon French's garage. Woz was deeply inspired and immediately started developing the prototype of the Apple I computer; as an assistance, Jobs put forward the idea and specific ideas of selling this computer. On April 11, 1976, Woz brought the completed Apple I prototype back to the club for display, which caused a lot of discussion; in July 1976, Woz started selling Apple I computers at a price of $666.66 because he I like repeated numbers. While other computers of the era were sold as assembled parts, the Apple I was groundbreaking as an assembled circuit board.
The built-in terminal circuit of the Apple I is quite special, so that the user only needs to connect a set of computer keyboards and an inexpensive screen. At that time, other computers such as the Altair 8800 were usually designed to be adjusted with a front switch and output as a light (usually a red LED light). If you want to connect a screen or a teletypewriter, you need to expand the hardware. This made the Apple I an innovative model for its time. By April 1977 the price dropped to $475. Apple removed the Apple 1 from its price list in October 1977, marking the official end of its product line.
As of February 2022, there are about 62 Apple Is in existence, making it a rare collectible, while the typical price point is between $14,000 and $16,000. The Apple I was sold for $50,000 in 1999 and auctioned in the UK for $213,600 in 2010. Additionally, a software-compatible replica of the Apple I—the Replica 1—was sold in 2003 for $200.
Source: Wikipedia, Baidu Encyclopedia
April 11, 2001: Microsoft announces that Clippy is dead
Office Assistant (Office Assistant) is a function developed by Microsoft Corporation and built into Microsoft Office. Office 97 is the first version with Office Assistant. Users can access the help system through the Office Assistant, which was developed based on Bayesian probability in Office 97 through 2002 for Windows and 98 through 2004 for Macintosh. The appearance of the Office Assistant is an animated image of a big-eyed paper clip (Clippy), designed by Kevan J. Atteberry.
The Office Assistant is the default startup method in some versions of Microsoft Office, which is annoying for many users. It pops up any time it feels the user needs its advice, and often its advice is unnecessary or useless. During the development of Office97, the Office Assistant received a lot of criticism even within Microsoft. In fact, the abbreviation of Office Assistant in the Office source code is TFC: this abbreviation comes from Bill Gates' comments on Office Assistant in a product review meeting. He called Office Assistant "The Fxxxing Clown (The Fxxxing Clown) ". Microsoft Office programmers sarcastically put this derisive title into the code, renaming it "The Friendly Character".
In our January 5th column , we introduced Clippy's predecessor, Microsoft Bob, Microsoft's assistive software product; Microsoft has expressed a passionate desire to guide in this product, trying to repeatedly use voice and graphics to teach all users Use a computer. When it comes to the Office Assistant, the paper clip Clippy inherits Bob's thinking. As soon as the user opens Office, the paper clip will appear on the right side of the screen, carefully guiding his words and deeds. But Clippy's guidance is so nuanced that, for example, after a user types in an address followed by "Dear," the paperclip pops out and stares into its wide eyes, saying, "Looks like you're writing a letter. Do you need help?" Behaviors like this have made more and more users hate Office Assistant and Clippy, and even produced a large number of offensive emoticons and memes.
Clippy is not well received by outsiders, even inside Microsoft. In 2001, just as Windows XP was going online, Microsoft even made "Office Assistant can be disabled" as an important element of the advertising campaign; on April 11, 2001, today in history, Microsoft released an article on its official website called For the announcement of "Farewell to Clippy", the official mercilessly used words like "Infamous (notorious)" in the title to announce the hidden news that their products will be offline. After WinXP was officially launched, users found that the Office Assistant was only turned off by default, but it could be turned on manually.
By Office 2004, the Mac OS version of Microsoft Office retained the Office Assistant installed by default, and Max was still the default assistant. Unlike its Windows counterpart, Max is confined to a small floating window with a balloon in the corner showing available hints. With Office 2007, Microsoft replaced the Office Assistant with an online help system. In early 2020, Microsoft pointed out that it might use Cortana as a replacement for the Office assistant. In July 2021, Microsoft showed off a new design for Clippy on Twitter and said that if they get 20,000 likes, they will replace the paperclip emoji on Microsoft 365 with the character. This tweet quickly surpassed nearly 100,000 likes; in November 2021, Microsoft officially updated the paperclip emoji on Windows 11 to Clippy, and this ill-fated paperclip returned to Windows in another form family.
Taking history as a mirror, we can know the ups and downs. Since the development of computer science, there have been many crucial events and characters. In " New Programmers: Our Technology Era, Our Program Life ", more than 40 technicians spanned half a century and used codes to write out real program life stories!
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