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Computer History on 19th February

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Everyday of the year is filled with one of the greatest events in Computer History. 19 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 19 th February are:

  • 2008: War between Blu-ray and HD DVD optical disc ended
  • 1987: Apple's site was launched
  • 1971: First warrant to search a computer
  • 1946: Alan Turing's proposal in ACE

We will go through each of the events in detail:

2008: War between Blu-ray and HD DVD optical disc ended

In early 2000 to 2003, two formats for storing high defination video and audio were introduced. They were:

  • Blu-ray
  • HD DVD

Several companies adopted both formats and were available commercially in 2006. Having one standard is good for uniformity. In 2008, on this day (19th February), several companies decided to move forward with Blu-ray format and abandon the use of HD DVD format.

Following this, on the same day, Toshiba announced that it will stop the development of HD DVD players and this brought the war between the two formats to an end.

1987: Apple's site was launched

Today is the day (19th February 1987) when the first version of Apple's site at Apple.com was launched. These were the early days of Apple which is one of the largest companies today who has changed the computing ecosystem completely.

Today, Apple's site is one of the most visited sites in the World mainly for its products.

1971: First warrant to search a computer

Today is the day (19th February 1971) that the first warrant was issued to search a Computer to gather evidence. This is common today but at that time, it was never done before. As per the rules at the time, the warrant to search a house was same as warrant to search a device.

Following this event, two groups were impacted:

  • Governments
  • Programmers

Governments took this serious and started to formulate laws to govern this area.

On the other hand, programmers understood the gravity of the situation and went on to create encryption methods to hide information stored in a Computer. The methods improved over the years. Not only it achieved its objective, it lead to forming Encryption as a field of research.

1946: Alan Turing's proposal in ACE

Today (19th February 1946), Alan Turing attended the Executive Committee of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). He proposed the introduction of mathematics division in ACE.

This proposal was later approved. This is crucial as this is considered to be the foundation of the research work done by Turing which changed the face of theoretical Computer Science was ever.

If you are born on this day (19 February), you should be proud and happy as such great people in Computer Science like Alan Turing played a major role.

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

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Computer History on 19th February
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