BGR’s Throwback Thursday segment is typically reserved for extinct tech, but this week we make an exception. On June 16th, 1911 — one hundred years ago today — Charles Ranlett Flint merged three companies to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. Headquartered in New York City, CTR manufactured and sold scales, card-punch machines, meat slicers and a variety of other products that have long since been replaced by several generations of improved offerings. CTR changed its name to Internatio...

Google’s YouTube team on Wednesday announced two milestones to help celebrate its 6-year anniversary. Most notably, YouTube stated that as of this past weekend, the site now serves over 3 billion videos each day. That’s equal to half the world’s population watching one YouTube video each day, and it represents an increase of 50% over last year. The company also said that over 48 hours of footage is uploaded to the site every minute, which is a 100% increase over last year. Needless to say, Y...

Apple’s first foray into retail was a giant question mark on May 19th, 2001, when Apple opened the doors to its first two retail locations in Glendale, CA and McLean, VA. Ten years later, Apple’s retail stores are a crucial piece of the puzzle that has been assembled to create a customer experience unlike any other. “Apple today announced that its first two retail locations welcomed over 7700 people and sold a combined total of $599,000 of merchandise during their first two day weekend,...

Microsoft first took the wraps off its Windows Phone 7 platform at its MIX10 conference in March 2010. At that time, Microsoft began a long and important process of courting developers, distributing developer tools and giving interested parties an ecosystem that would allow them to thrive. Now, one year later, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Director Brandon Watson shares some numbers regarding developer involvement with the Windows Phone platform. So far, Microsoft’s Windows Phone developer tools hav...

On this very day in 1985, Nintendo released a game that would forever change the company’s future, Super Mario Bros. Originally dubbed Jumpman, the character was eventually renamed by Nintendo USA after a surprise visit from their disgruntled landlord Mario Segale. Other fun facts about Mario include: he was originally a carpenter (not a plumber) and most of his iconic features (hat, suspenders, mustache) were added to give distinction to his  in-game face (which had to use 8-bit graphics). Sinc...

While the official 1-year anniversary of the App Store isn’t until Saturday, Apple apparently decided to start the celebration early. A new dedicated page headed with the colorful banner seen above appeared in iTunes this morning, proudly proclaiming that the App Store’s first birthday is upon us. So how is Apple celebrating this momentous occasion? By trying to get you to buy more apps, duh. Apple’s anniversary page is littered with Apple’s “favorite apps and games” alongs...

Wow. Two years have gone by super-fast — so fast that we forgot about our own anniversary — and we’re still as focused as ever. Last year we had a BGR anniversary event to blow things out, but we’re keeping it low key this year. No events, no parties, just work. After all, that’s why we’re where we are, right? Big shoutout to the whole BGR team that has put in countless hours of hard work and has helped maked BGR one of the most influential tech sites around. Joshua “...