By: Jacob Printz

In 1939, Hewlett- Packard, also known as HP, was founded. HP was founded in Palo Alto, California. Their first product was known as the 200A Audio Oscillator. This product quickly became a piece of test equipment for many engineers. The 200A was also notorious for being used for the sound effects of Walt Disney’s movie, “Fantasia.”

Pong was released in In 1966, however, Ralph Baer created a game similar to that of Pong. Pong itself was based off this. Nolan Bushnell, a man who saw Ralph Baer’s ping- pong game at a product show in California, pressured engineer Al Alcorn to make a car driving game but it was simply out of its time. So instead they created Pong.

In 1971, the first is sent from a man by the name of Ray Tomlinson. Ray Tomlinson, a worker at the researcher firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman was suppose to be working on a different project when he sent it. Tomlinson, who is also credited with choosing the symbol for , sent it over the military network APRANET. When Tomlinson was asked what was in the first he said, ”QWERTYUIOP.”

In 1952, IBM released one of the first practical magnetic tape systems that was high speed and available to electronic digital computers. The name of this storage device was IBM 726, and was announced on May, 21 st, The system used a unique ‘vacuum channel’ that was used to keep a loop of tape circulating between two points and could start and stop the tape within a second. The 726 was originally sold with IBM’s model 701 which held 2,000,000 digits a tape. This was a huge amount at the time. It cost $850 a month for rent.

In 1983, The Musical Instrument Digital Interface was first introduced at a music manufacturer show in Los Angeles, California. The Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, is an electronic interface that links together electronic music synthesizers. The information from MIDI tells the synthesizers when to stop, and when to stop, a specified note. It also says what sound that note should make, how loud, and more.