×

Search anything:

Computer History on 14th February

Internship at OpenGenus

Get this book -> Problems on Array: For Interviews and Competitive Programming

Everyday of the year is filled with one of the greatest events in Computer History. 14 th February is one such that and lead to the development of the current state of computing. You should feel lucky to witness this day.

Major events in Computer History that took place on 14 th February are:

  • 2005: YouTube domain name was registered
  • 1924: The Computing - Tabulating - Recording Company (CTR) was renamed to IBM
  • 1819: Christopher Sholes was born (Inventor of QWERTY)

We will go through each events in detail now.

2005: YouTube domain name was registered

Yes, today is the day (14th February 2005) when the domain name "YouTube.com" was registered. More specifically, it was register on this day of 2005 at 9:05 PM. In fact, it was today that the name "YouTube" was decided for the YouTube we have today.

It was the following day that is 15th February 2005 that the first version of YouTube was made public. Features like uploading a video and others were deployed later.

See the WhoIs record for YouTube.com

1924: The Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR) was renamed to IBM

On this day (14th February 1924), The Computing Tabulating Recording company (CTR) was renamed to IBM (International Business Machines).

The story is the Thomas Watson, the founder of CTR never liked the name "CTR" but was unable to convince other leadership in the company to get it renamed. In fact, 1917, Watson ran a newspaper AD where he mentioned IBM in addition to CTR. It was as follows:

International Time Recording Company of New York 
              Subsidiary of 
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, New York
                Makers of
   International Business Machines

Other major leaders like Patterson passed away in 1922 and Fairchild was sick in early 1924 which gave Watson the liberty to renamed CTR to IBM. On this day, he submitted a request to New York Stock Exchange to list IBM and following this, the name "CTR" disappeared.

1819: Christopher Sholes was born (Inventor of QWERTY)

Christopher Sholes was born on this day (14th February 1819) and is widely known as the man behind QWERTY keyboard. The interesting fact is that the keyword came into existence much before computers were developed.

He is popularly known for:

  • Inventing the typewriter
  • Designing the first QWERTY keyboard

Though typewriters first appeared in 1700s which were redesigned in 1800s as well but the real credit to make typewriter commerically successful goes to Sholes and other inventors of this time. Sholes owned a newspaper company and this motivated him to create a typewriter to optimize his business.

Sholes' contribution to Computer Science is less known but it is significant. It was nearly a century ago that he designed the perfect keyboard and it was this designed that was adopted in the early computers. In fact, the same keyboard design is in wide use even today.

If you are born on this day (14 February), you should be proud and happy as such great people in Computer Science like Christopher Sholes was born and great events for companies like IBM and YouTube (Google).

Ue Kiao, PhD

Ue Kiao, PhD

Ue Kiao is a Technical Author and Software Developer with B. Sc in Computer Science at National Taiwan University and PhD in Algorithms at Tokyo Institute of Technology | Researcher at TaoBao

Read More

Improved & Reviewed by:


Computer History on 14th February
Share this