This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries

From AT&T’s pseudo-birth to Woz’s "US Festival," with TCP-IP, 1-2-3, Word, "WarGames" and even the first real cell phone included: 1983 was a rich year in technology. A few of the notable moments have already received press attention, but below you’ll find all 25 neatly alphabetized. (See a slideshow of the same list with pretty pictures.)

1. AT&T is born . . . kinda-sorta

Well, the company known today as AT&T was indeed founded in 1983 . . . as Southwestern Bell Corp., headquartered in St. Louis. Later it became SBC. There was a move to San Antonio . . . yada-yada-yada . . . and, in 2005, SBC euthanizes the quivering mess that was the original AT&T, born 128 years earlier as Bell Telephone Co. No fools, SBC, they kept the name.

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From AT&T’s pseudo-birth to Woz’s "US Festival," with TCP-IP, 1-2-3, Word, "WarGames" and even the first real cell phone included: 1983 was a rich year in technology. A few of the notable moments have already received press attention, but below you’ll find all 25 neatly alphabetized. (See a slideshow of the same list with pretty pictures.)

1. AT&T is born . . . kinda-sorta

Well, the company known today as AT&T was indeed founded in 1983 . . . as Southwestern Bell Corp., headquartered in St. Louis. Later it became SBC. There was a move to San Antonio . . . yada-yada-yada . . . and, in 2005, SBC euthanizes the quivering mess that was the original AT&T, born 128 years earlier as Bell Telephone Co. No fools, SBC, they kept the name.

P.S. Also launched in '83 was today’s AT&T logo, that circle nicknamed Death Star.

2. Chillin’ on "The Day After"

We had always known that wartime technology would be the death of us, and so it was that "The Day After," an ABC TV movie, would come to be known as the script for the final chapter. And, sure enough, the survivors of this U.S./Soviet throw-down have it worse than those who got incinerated. Nuclear winter, anyone?

P.S. Out on DVD, 2004.

3. Compaq Portable, in name only

I suppose it depends on what you mean by portable. At a not-so-svelte 28 pounds, the Compaq Portable, while laying claim to being the first IBM-compatible carry-about, wasn’t exactly ready to be slipped into a manila folder. Heavy price tag, too: $3,590.

P.S. Compaq sold 53,000 of them in year one, a sign of laptops to come.

4. Dahon folds a bike into briefcase

Maybe not a briefcase, but the first of what will be 3 million Dahon folding bicycles rolled off an assembly line in Taiwan. Brainchild of U.S. physicist David Hon -- see the name thing going on there? -- the Dahon folder was conceived as a planet-saving response to the oil crisis of the 1970s.

P.S. Going to clown camp? You can buy a Dahon folder with 12-inch wheels.

5. DNS spares us 147.132.42.18

Imagine a 'Net where impossible-to-remember IP addresses reigned instead of roll-off-the-tongue domain names. Even 25 years ago, with only a few hundred machines connected, that was an unappealing enough prospect to produce the Domain Name System.

P.S. Someone needs to ask Paul Mockapetris whether, "Hi, I invented DNS," ever got him a date.

6. FBI nabs hubby-wife spy duo

James Harper, a freelance electrical engineer, was married to Ruby Schuler, secretary to the president of ballistic-missiles contractor Systems Control. She swiped documents that he passed on to the Polish government. They got caught after he got cold feet and tried to negotiate his way out of the mess.

P.S. She died that summer; he’s serving life.

7. FCC OKs first cell phone

On Sept. 21, 1983, the Federal Communications Commission gives its blessing to the Motorola DynaTac 8000x . . . and 10 minutes later some jerk is yapping on the thing in a movie theater.

P.S. This "gadget" weighed almost 2 pounds and fetched $4,000. Want one?