17 Jul 1970 American engineer Ralph Baer introduced the first prototype in the world of gaming TV set-top box. His invention called the “Brown box,” Baer showed the manufacturer Magnavox (subsidiary of Philips brand). The idea was very bold at that time computer games were previously the prerogative only of slot machines and display the same image on your home TV, no one dared.
Harsh analog console era
The idea relished electronics manufacturer, and two years later the world saw the world’s first game console Magnavox Odyssey. Oddly enough, the “movers and shakers” of slot machines, including Atari, released their own versions of home consoles much later.
Despite the fact that the first console came out 45 years ago, it was almost all the distinctive features of modern models: two controller for cooperative play and even the famous light gun, which decades later our compatriots “duck hunting” and shot down a UFO coming home from school. The game starts with cartridges.
Now if games are exclusive to consoles, and then in the 1970s the console was exclusive to TVs. Odyssey only worked with Magnavox brand TVs, but for a color image on the TV had to fix special pads.
Instead of processor and graphics card — a pack of transistors and diodes in the stuffing
The hardware basis of the device is seriously different from modern counterparts — instead of chips with iron inside worked 40 transistors and 40 diodes, but instead of graphics in the modern sense, most games display a set of points in the style of the game “Tetris”.
The serial version consoles Magnavox Odyssey
17 July 1975 had the world’s first docking of American and Soviet spacecraft. In the joint maneuvers was the “Soyuz-19” and “Apollo” that are fine-tuned by the designers of the two superpowers for the sake of joint exploration and mutual aid astronauts in flight.
All started with a suggestion from NASA in 1970 to equip the spacecraft with a compatible docking means to ensure that the astronauts could move from one spacecraft to another when necessary. In Moscow approved this idea, after which each of the parties has developed several prototypes for a “rehearsal” of the dock, and final versions of the ships were ready in 3 years.
Docking in the space program “Soyuz — Apollo”
The problem was not even in the adaptation of “iron” docking mechanisms, and the peculiarities of life support systems — American astronauts breathed oxygen at a pressure of 0,35 atmospheric, and the Soviet ship generated almost identical to earth’s atmosphere. A sudden change in the breathing mixture astronauts would be decompression sickness that ends in paralysis or death. The problem was solved by creating an intermediate transfer compartment with averaged atmosphere between the two ships.
The crews of the Soviet and American spacecraft
After the problem with the life support systems have been resolved, the docking of “Soyuz” and “Apollo” took place without any problems. After 3 hours of maneuvering the commander Alexei Leonov and Thomas Stafford shook hands, after which the American crew moved on Board a Soviet ship.
17 July 2009, the FAS started hearing about the “imposition” of the system Windows by notebook manufacturers. The Antimonopoly service got interested by the fact that the devices of aser, Asus, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and Dell uncontested installed Microsoft, from which it was impossible to refuse and return the unused license money.
The laptops ship with Windows regardless of the wishes of the buyer and to this day
Theoretically, when you first start the laptop, the buyer has the right not to accept the license agreement by Microsoft and will not complete the installation Windows, but the system is still included in the price of the laptop, so this situation is more reminiscent of a scene “buy a ticket and to spite the inspector will go on foot”. The FAS tried to make the scheme a refund for the OEM license and make this procedure legitimate right buyer.
To fine the manufacturers of laptops Antimonopoly service, still failed, because the collusion of all brands was unprovable, but the case moved from the dead point, and at the time of closing, November 16, 2009 Acer, ASUS, Samsung and Toshiba have launched mechanisms to refund buyers if they refused to be installed on a Windows laptop.
However, OEM licenses cost ridiculous money (big discount Microsoft loyal to the firms affected), and on a desperate step for the extraction of money for the “Windows loading” decided: 0.1% laptops buyers in Russia. After this, the FAS decided that the status quo suits the consumers, and withdrew lawsuits against the manufacturers of laptops.
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