Today in History – February 13, 1959 – the first Barbie doll goes on sale. Barbie’s inventor, Ruth Handler, was inspired by seeing that her daughter, Barbie, and her girl friends enjoyed playing with adult female dolls, but most dolls at the time were baby dolls. Handler created 3D models of dolls that she thought [...]

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Today in History – February 12, 2010 – First computer engineer Barbie announced. Mattel had launched a competition for Barbie’s next career earlier in the year.  The choices were: computer engineer, architect, environmentalist, news anchor and surgeon. I was part of a group that launched a viral campaign for the computer engineer and we won [...]

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Today in History – January 24, 1984 – Apple Computer unveils the Macintosh personal computer. Apple introduced “the Mac” through its famous “1984″ television commercial that was played at the 1984 Super Bowl. The imagery pitted Apple’s new generation of the people’s personal computer against the Orwellian IBM. The Mac was an innovation breakthrough in [...]

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Today in History – January 23, 1996 – The first version of the Java programming language is released. Java was developed independently of the Web, starting in 1991 with a small group of Sun engineers called the “Green Team”. Their vision was that the next wave in computing was the union of digital consumer devices [...]

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Today in History – December 26, 1982 – TIME’s Person of the Year is a computer. History has always pondered whether the future was propelled by the movement of the masses, the fine control of the elite, or the inevitable flow of society. However, before now no one ever questioned whether history was centered around [...]

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