Organize | Wang Qilong
Through "today in history", we can look at the future from the past and change the future from the present.
Today is November 1, 2022, and today, in 1949, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was established in Beijing, a comprehensive research center of China's highest academic leadership institution, and the first president was Guo Moruo. Looking back at November 1 in history, what key events happened today?
November 1, 1950: Lotus founder Mitchell Kapor is born
Source: Wikipedia
Mitchell David Kapor (born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur who grew up in New York and is best known for his early days as an application developer in the personal computer software industry; Kapor later founded Lotus Development Corp and was instrumental in the development of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet.
Lotus used to dominate the email market on a par with Microsoft, but because Microsoft had the advantage of bundling its own software for the Windows system, Lotus was declining and withdrew from the historical stage.
In 1986, Kapor left Lotus; In 1990, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation with John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, where he served as chairman until 1994.
In 2003, Kapor became founding chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, the founder of the open-source web browser Firefox. Kapor has been an investor in the PC industry, and he and his wife, Freada Kapor Klein, continue to invest in socially impactful tech startups that seek to close the gap in opportunity and opportunity for underrepresented communities and try to remove barriers that prevent full participation in the tech ecosystem.
Source: Wikipedia
November 1, 1960: Tim Cook, successor to Apple, is born
On August 24, 2011, Steve Jobs submitted his resignation to Apple's board of directors, recommending in his resignation letter that Chief Operating Officer Timothy Donald Cook replace him. Tim Cook was born on November 1, 1960, a native of Alabama, USA, and served as Apple's chief operating officer (COO) until becoming chief executive officer (CEO).
Source: Wikipedia
Cook joined Apple in March 1998 as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations and then Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Operations; On August 24, 2011, before Steve Jobs' death, he was named CEO.
During his tenure as CEO, he advocated for reforms in international and domestic communications surveillance, cybersecurity, and environmental protection, and pulled Apple out of manufacturing by closing warehouses and factories around the world that helped improve profit margins; Since Cook took the helm of Apple in 2011, Apple's revenue and profits have doubled by 2020, and the company's market capitalization has increased from $348 billion to $1.9 trillion.
In 2014, Cook became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to come out publicly; He also serves on the board of directors of Nike Corporation and the National Football Foundation, and is a trustee of his alma mater, Duke University, where he holds an MBA. Outside of Apple's work, Cook is also involved in philanthropy, and in March 2015, he said he planned to donate his wealth to charity.
This year marks Cook's tenth year as CEO of Apple, and it is often said that Cook is not a successful creator, but a great CEO; Cook's steady development has made Apple the first public company in the world to exceed $2 trillion in market capitalization, and he is not a shadow or replacement for Jobs, but an operating genius.
When do you think Apple's peak will be? Was it the 80s that created the world's first and most successful personal computer, the Apple II? Or the Jobs Comeback period that created the iPhone and iPod? Or the Cook era that made Apple a tech giant? Join the polls and comments to share your insights.
Source: Wikipedia
November 1, 1961: Compatible time-sharing system is born
Source: Wikipedia
A timesharing system is a way of sharing resources: through multiprogramming and multitasking, multiple users can use a computer at the same time. MIT's Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) was one of the world's first time-sharing systems, developed by Fernando Corbato.
John Barcos mentioned the concept of excessive time in 1954, but computers at the time were not yet possible. In June 1959, Christopher Stredge published the paper "Time Sharing in Large Fast Computers," and McCarthy focused on this issue and initiated the project in a memorandum from the MIT laboratory. In November 1961, Cobato, head of the time-sharing system at the MIT laboratory, demonstrated the results of experimental research, and CTSS was born.
Source: Wikipedia
November 1, 1994: Domain name Amazon.com successfully registered
In July 1994, American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos resigned as vice president of Wall Street firm D. E. Shaw & Co. and moved to Seattle, Washington, eager to participate in the then explosive Internet commerce industry, seized the opportunity to start a company in the garage of Bellevue, Washington, and named it "Cadabra".
Bezos wanted to name the company with an A so it could get to the eye more quickly in an alphabetical list. After flipping through the dictionary, Bezos decided to use the name "Amazon" because he felt it was an "exotic and different" place, and the Amazon was the largest river in the world by basin area and water flow, which coincided with Bezos' desire for the company to be the best in the world.
Source: Wikipedia
On November 1 of the same year, Bezos registered the domain name of Amazon.com and officially launched the website in July 1995, and the first book sold was Hofstadter's "The Concept and Creative Analogy of Fluids: Ideas on the Basic Mechanisms of Computer Modeling"; In October 1995, Amazon began to face the public, and its products became diversified. In the first two months, Amazon sold all 50 U.S. states and 45 other countries, generating $20,000 in weekly sales.
Since 2000, Amazon's brand logo has featured a smiling arrow from the letter "A" to the letter "Z" to symbolize the wide range of products under its umbrella. Today, Amazon is known for its technological innovation and large-scale disruption of mature industries, and it is the world's largest online marketplace, AI assistant provider, live streaming platform, and cloud computing platform; Amazon is also the second-largest private employer in the United States and one of the most valuable companies in the world, and it and Apple have long dominated the top two of the global market capitalization.
Source: Wikipedia
November 1, 2008: Bitcoin is born
The concept of Bitcoin was first proposed on November 1, 2008 by netizens calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto, and was officially born on January 3, 2009. At the time, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first 50 bitcoins on a small server in Helsinki, Finland.
Bitcoin is a digital currency in the form of P2P, where transaction records are transparent and peer-to-peer transmission means a decentralized payment system. Anyone can participate in Bitcoin activities, which can be issued through a computer operation called "mining"; The number of Bitcoin protocols is capped at 21 million to avoid inflation issues.
The use of bitcoin is through the private key as a digital signature, allowing individuals to pay directly to others, the same as cash, without going through third-party institutions such as banks, clearing centers, securities dealers, electronic payment platforms, etc., thus avoiding high fees, cumbersome processes and regulatory problems, any user can use as long as they have digital devices that can connect to the Internet.
Source: Wikipedia
Bitcoin has been a hot topic in recent years, many people consider it to be another Ponzi scheme, and there are also official agencies that have repeatedly endorsed that it does not have the same legal status as fiat currency; And in addition to the discussion of the future of Bitcoin, the origin of Bitcoin has always been a mystery: as the originator of Bitcoin, how did Satoshi Nakamoto hide his true identity on the Internet in the 21st century?
In early November 2008, the mysterious man appeared on the cryptography mailing list with a Bitcoin white paper; In mid-December 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto answered Madhatter2's question on a forum and disappeared. In just over a year, he released and updated more than a dozen versions of the Bitcoin client, built a community prototype, dealt with a large breach incident, built an alarm system...
In the ten years since the birth of Bitcoin, many people or institutions have been associated with this name: Elon Musk; CIA； Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki; George Washington University professor Nick Saab; Some even believe that Satoshi Nakamoto's name is actually a combination of the names of four companies, including Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi and Motorola, suggesting that Bitcoin was actually developed by these four companies and published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, or "Satoshi Nakamoto."
And even Meituan CEO Wang Xing once said that in theory, Satoshi Nakamoto is already the richest man in the world; Recently, the price of bitcoin has risen sharply, breaking through $52,000, with a market capitalization of $974 billion, which has exceeded Tencent's market capitalization. Could Bitcoin be a big scam? Who is Satoshi Nakamoto's real identity? Perhaps not even time can verify the answers to these questions. Join us in this session to share your insights.
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