This Week in Tech History: Spirit Heads to Mars

A big step is taken towards automated computation, Compaq Computer makes a big purchase and NASA begins its Mars Exploration Rover Mission … It all happened This Week in Tech History.

This week in 1887 – US Inventor Herman Hollerith submitted his patent application for the ‘Art of Compiling Statistics’, which was his punched card calculator. This machine was a big step towards automated computation. His company originally did business under the name The Hollerith Electric Tabulating System, specializing in punched card data processing equipment. The company joined three others in 1911 to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. That company was renamed in 1924 and became IBM. Believe it or not, the punch cards and machines Hollerith came up with to read them are still in use in some parts of the world – and were front stage during the 2000 presidential election and the “hanging chad” debacle.

1996 – Linux v2.0 was released. 2.0 was a significant improvement over the earlier versions of the operating system that some experts said would become a competitor for MS Windows. Several versions of Linux have been developed as many in the computing world look for ways to wriggle free from the clutches of Microsoft.

1998 – Compaq Computer paid $9 billion for Digital Equipment Corporation in what was, at the time, the largest merger in the history of the computer industry. Compaq soon found itself in financial difficulty of its own and subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard. The Compaq brand name was retired in 2013.

And this week in 2003 – The Spirit rover was launched, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission. Nearly seven months later, the rover arrived at the red planet and landed successfully. The Spirit Rover’s mission was expected to last about 92 Earth days but ended up going a little longer than that. It was only when Spirit got stuck in a sand trap at an angle that hampered solar recharging of its batteries that it’s mission was finally halted – 5 years, 3 months and 27 days after landing. An interesting side note: a part of Spirit’s rock abrasion tool was made with aluminum that was recovered from the site of the World Trade Center towers.