During a break in the action of Super Bowl XVIII on January
22nd, 1984, audiences first saw a commercial directed by
Ridley Scott that is now widely agreed to be one of the
most powerful and effective of all time.

Apple’s "1984" spot, featuring a woman throwing a
sledgehammer through a screen on which a Big
Brother-like figure preaches about "the unification
of thought," got people around the United States
talking and heralded a new age for Apple, consumer       
technology and advertising.
       

Steve Jobs with the Apple 1984 computer.        
        
        
        

     
    
              
TIM MIGUIRE 
                                                    

       

1990

Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts is 58 years young
today.

On May 11, 1997, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigned
after 19 moves in a game against Deep Blue, a chess-playing
computer developed by scientists at IBM. This was the sixth
and final game of their match, which Kasparov lost two games
to one, with three draws.

Kasparov, a chess prodigy from Azerbaijan, was a skillful chess
player from childhood. At 21, Kasparov played Anatoly Karpov
for the world title, but the 49-game match ended indecisively.

The next year, Kasparov beat Karpov to become the youngest
world champion in history. With a FIDE (Federation International
des Echecs) score of 2800, and a streak of 12 world chess titles
in a row, Kasparov was considered the greatest chess player in
history going into his match with Deep Blue.

Garry Kimovich Kasparov

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (69).

On April 30, 1993, four years after publishing a proposal for
“an idea of linked information systems,” computer scientist
Tim Berners-Lee released the source code for the world’s
first web browser and editor. 

The browser, originally called Mesh, that he dubbed World
Wide Web became the first royalty-free, easy-to-use means
of browsing the emerging information network that soon
developed into the internet as we know it today.

The average American now spends 24 hours a week online.

2024

This NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world’s first web server.

On April 4, 1975, at a time when most Americans used typewriters, childhood friends Bill Gates (68) and Paul Allen (1953 – 2018) 
found Microsoft, a company that makes computer software.

Originally based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Microsoft relocated
to Washington State in 1979 and eventually grew into a major multinational technology corporation. In 1987, the year after
Microsoft went public, 31-year-old Gates became the world’s
youngest billionaire.

Gates and Allen started Microsoft—originally called Micro-Soft,
for microprocessors and software—in order to produce software
for the Altair 8800 (below) an early personal computer.

Historians will likely view Bill Gates as a business figure as important to computers as John D. Rockefeller was to oil.