First Versions: 1984

Apple Mac OS

Mac System icon
1984

Original name: "Mac Software" or "System" (1984)

Name: "Mac OS" (since version 7.6, 1991)

Full name: "Macintosh Operating System"

Categories: Electronics, Home - Office - School

Subcategory: Operating Systems

Developer: Apple Computer Inc.
(founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne)

First versions:
--- System .85 with Finder 1.0: not a real operating system, it was developed only to run the Macintosh Guided Tour, and released in the related disk shipped with the Apple Macintosh 128K personal computer.
--- System .97 (known as 1.0) / Finder 1.0: first real Macintosh operating system.

Released: January 24, 1984 - Cupertino, California, USA

Platforms: Motorola 68000 microprocessor

Programming language: Object Pascal

Default user interface: Graphical User Interface (GUI)

First price: Mac OS was introduced in 1984 as being integral to the original Apple Macintosh 128K personal computer, which had an initial selling price of 2,495 USD

Features: The first Macintosh 128K machines came with a plastic Macintosh box that included: "System Disk" floppy disk with System 1.0 (0.97) / Finder 1.0; "A Guided Tour of Macintosh", floppy disk and audio tape. MacWrite and MacPaint applications came in a separate box that included software disks, guided tour disk and guided tour tape. The System file used on the January 1984 System Disk and Write/Paint disks is, technically, "Version .97 14-Jan-84". This information was hidden from the user, for internal reference only. For the user, this was System 1.0 / Finder 1.0. System 1 had a desktop, windows, icons, a mouse, menus, and scrollbars. Disks had an "Empty Folder" - new folders were created by changing the name of the Empty Folder - a replacement Empty Folder would immediately appear. The Trash worked like a garbage chute - anything in it would disappear with the next restart. Only one program could be run at a time, no virtual memory or protected memory was available.

Interesting facts: The original Macintosh system software was partially based on the Lisa OS, previously released by Apple for the Lisa computer in 1983. As part of an agreement allowing Xerox to buy shares in Apple at a favorable price, it also used concepts from the Xerox PARC Xerox Alto, which Steve Jobs and several other Macintosh team members had previewed. The first version of Mac OS (simply called System) is easily distinguished between many other operating systems from the same period because it does not use a command line interface; it was one of the first operating systems to use an entirely graphical user interface or GUI. Additional to the system kernel is the Finder, an application used for file management, which also displays the Desktop. The icons of the operating system, which represent folders and application software, were designed by Susan Kare, who later designed the icons for Microsoft Windows 3.0. Bruce Horn and Steve Capps wrote the Macintosh Finder, as well as a number of Macintosh system utilities.

Property: Apple Inc.

Producer website: http://www.apple.com

Macintosh System Disk (690-5003A), 3.5-inch floppy containing System 1.0 (0.97) / Finder 1.0

Macintosh System 1.0 boot. The sound of a chime and a smiling Macintosh ensure that the hardware is in order and the boot process is successfully completed.

Macintosh System 1.0 welcome splash

Macintosh System 1.0 desktop

Macintosh System 1.0, some icons by Susan Kare

"A Guided Tour of Macintosh", 3.5-inch floppy disk (690-5002A) and 33 min. audio tape. Recording tape was identical on both sides.

"A Guided Tour of Macintosh", some screenshots

Apple (Macintosh) from the Ads series by Andy Warhol (screen print on Lenox Museum Board, 1985)

Apple Mac OS, an advanced version (13.2 - "Ventura", 2022)

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--- Apple (Personal Computer)

Tetris

Tetris logo, MS-DOS version 1986

Name: "Tetris"

Category: Video games

Subcategory: Arcade

Genre: Puzzle

Inventor: Alexey Pajitnov

Developers:
--- Alexey Pajitnov
--- Dmitry Pavlovsky
--- Vadim Gerasimov

Invented: June 6, 1984 - Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, USSR

Released: 1984 (USSR), 1986 (EU), 1987 (USA)

Publishers: Mirrorsoft (Europe), Spectrum HoloByte (North America)

Platforms: prototype developed for Elektronika 60 (Russian clone of the PDP-11); first version developed under MS-DOS and released for IBM PC

Number of players: Originally single-player, then multiplayer

Features: Tetris was inspired by the puzzle board game pentominoes (a pentomino is a plane geometric figure formed by joining five equal squares edge to edge), but its inventor Alexey Pajitnov felt that it might have been too complicated with twelve different shape variations, so switched to tetrominoes, of which there are only seven variants. "Tetriminos" are game pieces shaped like tetrominoes, geometric shapes composed of four square blocks each. A random sequence of Tetriminos fall down the playing field (a rectangular vertical shaft, called the "well" or "matrix"). The objective of the game is to manipulate these Tetriminos, by moving each one sideways (if the player feels the need) and rotating it by 90 degree units, with the aim of creating a horizontal line of ten units without gaps. When such a line is created, it disappears, and any block above the deleted line will fall. Points are awarded for each Tetrimino successfully dropped into place. When a certain number of lines are cleared, the game enters a new level. As the game progresses, each level causes the Tetriminos to fall faster, and the game ends when the stack of Tetriminos reaches the top of the playing field and no new Tetriminos are able to enter. The prototype, programmed in Pascal on an Elektronika 60 - a Soviet clone of a Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-11 computer - features monochrome graphics, and the blocks in the tetrominos are represented by a pair of delete/rubout characters (character code 177); a later revision was made where the blocks are represented by a pair of square brackets instead.

Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov
(Moscow, March 14, 1956)
video game developer and
creator of the puzzle game Tetris

Interesting facts: Tetris was created in June 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov, an artificial intelligence researcher working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences at their Computer Center in Moscow. Pajitnov chose the name "Tetris" after "tetra", the Greek word for four, and tennis, his favorite sport. The game proved popular with his colleagues. Academy of Sciences co-workers Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov ported the game to the IBM PC. From there, the PC game exploded into popularity, and began spreading all around Moscow. In 1986 Mirrorsoft, a British-based company, signed a deal to produce the game in the United Kingdom. In 1987 Spectrum HoloByte company released its IBM PC version of Tetris in the United States, where the game's popularity was tremendous. Tetris was the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US. Because the idea of intellectual property rights did not exist in Soviet Russia, as anything Pajitnov had made belonged to the state, he did not receive even a bonus for his work. In 1996, the rights to the game reverted from the Russian state to Pajitnov himself: The Tetris Company was founded, claiming to hold copyright registrations and taking out trademark registrations for Tetris in almost every country in the world.

Quote (Alexey Pajitnov): «I never imagined Tetris was going to be this successful. But the simple, yet addicting nature of Tetris still has me playing it a few times every week».

Property: The Tetris Company

Product website: http://tetris.com

Tetris prototype, screenshot and gameplay (1984)

Tetris, first version screenshot (1984)

Tetris English version 1984 - screenshot

Tetris, English version screenshots (1984). Since March 2013, this version is hosted in a permanent exhibit in New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Tetris, MS-DOS version screenshots and gameplay (1986)

Tetris by Atari, advertising (1988)

Tetris, arcade version cabinet and gameplay by Atari (1988). Single-player or competitive mode. The music was composed by Brad Fuller: some Traditional Russian tunes are used including Kalinka, Troika, and Katyusha. About the music introduced by Atari in the game, Tetris inventor Alexey Pajitnov said: «It was very embarrassing for me: when kids of the world hear these pieces of music, they start screaming: "Tetris! Tetris!" That's not very good for Russian culture».

Tetris designer Alexey Pajitnov and son holding early copies of Tetris (1989)

Tetris celebrates 30th Anniversary (1984-2014)

Motorola (cellphone)

Motorola logo 1955
by Morton Goldsholl

Name: "Motorola DynaTAC 8000X"

Categories: Electronics, Home - Office - School

Subcategory: Telephony

Inventor: Martin Cooper

Producer: Motorola, Inc. (founded by brothers Paul V. and Joseph E. Galvin in 1928, as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation)

Prototypes made since: 1973

Martin Cooper
Chicago - Dec. 26, 1928,
the inventor of the
handheld cellular Mobile,
phoneholding his
prototype DynaTAC
cellphone in 2007

Production start: 1984 - Schaumburg, Illinois, USA

First price: 3,995 USD

Features: The world's first commercial handheld cellular phone, the Motorola DynaTAC (abbreviation of Dynamic Adaptive Total Area Coverage) 8000X phone, received approval from the FFC (U.S. Federal Communications Commission) on September 21, 1983. It weighed 28 ounces (790 g) and was 10 inches (25 cm) high, not including its flexible "rubber duck" whip antenna. It offered 30 minutes of talk time and 8 hours of standby, and a LED display for dialing or recall of one of 30 phone numbers. In addition to the typical 12-key telephone keypad, it had nine additional special keys: Rcl (recall); Clr (clear); Snd (send); Sto (store); Fcn (function); End; Pwr (power); Lock; Vol (volume).

Interesting facts: On April 3, 1973 Cooper and Mitchell demonstrated two working phones to the media and to passers-by prior to walking into a scheduled press conference at the New York Hilton in midtown Manhattan. Standing on Sixth avenue near the Hilton, Cooper made the first handheld cellular phone call in public from the prototype DynaTAC. In 1984 Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the first cell phone to be offered commercially in the world.

Slogan: «This is a Motorola cellular portable telephone. Take it to work, to play, to lunch and still keep up with your customers, your suppliers, your life».

Property: Motorola, Inc.

Producer website: http://www.motorola.com

Motorola DynaTAC (1973)

Motorola DynaTAC trademark (filed October 19, 1973). Bottom-right: «SN 4,076. Motorola, Inc., Chicago, Ill., by merger and change of name from Motorola, Inc., Franklin Park, Ill. Filed Oct. 19, 1973. DYNATAC - For Radio Telephone Communications Systems Comprising Transmitters, Receivers, Controls and Parts Therefor (U.S. Cl. 21). First use June 30, 1973».

Motorola DynaTAC review (Business Week, April 7, 1973). «Motorola invents the take-along phone».

Motorola DynaTAC review June 1973 - cover

Motorola DynaTAC review (Popular Science, June 1973, cover and extract). «NEW TAKE-ALONG TELEPHONES Give You Pushbutton Calling to Any Phone Number».