It took 51 years before hard disk drives reached the size of 1 TB (terabyte, i.e. 1,000 GB). This happened in 2007. In 2009, the first hard drive with 2 TB of storage arrived. So while it took 51 years to reach the first terabyte, it took just two years to reach the second.

This article looks back at how hard disk drives have evolved since they first burst onto the scene in 1956. We’ll examine the radical changes over time for three different aspects of HDDs: Size, storage space, and price.

Read more

Google often modifies its logo to reflect current events and celebrate anniversaries of famous people and accomplishments. This post collects all the science- and tech-related anniversaries and events that Google celebrated with a special logo last year.

Read more

Trailblazers, creatives and innovators have taken the Internet to where it is today and made it an essential part of our everyday lives. We have selected a number of interesting “firsts” from the history of the Internet (and the Web) for your reading pleasure.

Read more

Have you ever wondered about those key moments in time that made open source software such an immense success story? We just did, and here below is our list.

We have narrowed the list down to what we consider the nine most important events that shaped open source into what it is today. The focus is on events that propelled open source forward and resulted in a rich inheritance, or events that strengthened the reputation of open source software in the eyes of the public.

Read more

We often think of computers as a very modern phenomenon, but there were actually plenty of computers around 50 years ago. They just weren’t an everyman commodity, instead limited to goverment and corporate use. And they certainly weren’t small. Some of them had imaginative names like Whirlwind, Colossus and Pegasus, while others were slightly less poetic with names like Z4, AN/FSQ-7 and ENIAC.

Below we have listed as many as 19 examples of computers from the early days, pioneering efforts that although cutting edge in their day now look lovingly retro.

Read more

Last Friday we started our look into the history of computer messaging and which applications and services we have used to communicate over computer networks through the decades.

So far we have covered the time period from 1960 to 1990, i.e. the era before the birth of the World Wide Web that we live in today. Now it’s time to continue our journey through the history of computer messaging, from 1990 until today.

Read more

We humans are (mostly) a social breed. Ever since we have been able to connect computers together, we have enjoyed using our computers to communicate with each other. These days it’s hard to imagine a life without computer messaging such as email, IM and other applications that let us communicate cheaply and over great distances.

We decided to take a look at the history of computer messaging, the technologies and services that ultimately led us to where we are today.

Read more

Software piracy has been around basically since the inception of software, and copy protection methods almost as long, so today’s discussions around DRM really isn’t anything new. All the way back in 1976, a certain Bill Gates wrote an open letter to a computer hobbyist club complaining that “most of you steal your software.” Back in those days, however, even he considered copy protection to just be in the way and wasn’t an advocate for it.

There has been a huge number of more or less creative methods to prevent people from making illegal copies of games and other software, but the ones we think are the most interesting (and amusing to look back at) are the ones involving actual physical extras, frequently used in the 80’s and early 90’s. Here are a few gems from that era.

Read more

This is what Microsoft’s homepage looked back in 1994 when it was first launched, and its evolution during the following years.

Keep reading for a closer look at the seven first versions of Microsoft.com and some very retro web design.

Read more

Have you ever wondered what the guy who invented the World Wide Web is up to these days? What about the guys who created Photoshop, or the one who created the PHP scripting language?

You may not recognize all of these people, but you’ll definitely recognize what they’ve accomplished. These are people who have made great contributions to computer and Internet technology in the past… but what are they up to now?

This list is a starting point, so help us add to it in the comments!

Read more