Archive for April, 2012

In 1827 – Mathematics student William Rowan Hamilton presented his “Theory of Systems of Rays” at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. It led to the development of the wave theory of light and led to the development of quantum mechanics.

In 1940 – A patent was granted to Herman Anthony for a leak-proof dry-cell battery. The patent was assigned to Ray-o-Vac.

In 2005 – At 8:27 PM, Jawed Karim, one of the co-founders of YouTube, uploaded the video “Me at the zoo” making it the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube.

In 1592 – Wilhelm Schickard was born. He would grow up to create an early form of calculating machine called the “calculating clock”, that could add and subtract up to six-digit numbers.

In 1993 – NCSA Mosaic 1.0 was released, becoming the first web browser to achieve popularity among the general public.

In 2000 – The Big Number Change took place in the United Kingdom, changing how phone numbers were dialed in many areas. With the boom in mobile devices the UK had almost exhasuted all possible numbers, and needed the change to increase the pool of numbers to be assigned.

Hosts: Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Iyaz Akhtar and Jason Howell

Apple admits 4G is meaningless, why I call them Oh! Limb pics, 500-mile electric vehicles, and more.

Guest: Denise Howell

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Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Running time: 55:03

In 1962 – President John F. Kennedy opens the Seattle World’s fair by telephone from Palm Beach, Florida. He pressed a gold telegraph key which focused an antenna at Andover, Maine and a Navy radio telescope station in Maryland on a star to pick up a 10,000 year-old radio signal. That in turn set in motion various exhibits at the fair.

In 1964 – Satellite Transit-5BN-3 failed to reach orbit after launch. It dispersed 2.1 pounds (0.95 kg) of radioactive plutonium in its SNAP RTG power source.

In 1988 – Tandy Corp. held a press conference in New York to announce its plans to build IBM PS/2 clones.

Hosts: Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Iyaz Akhtar and Jason Howell

One data plan for many devices coming, government demands to spy on your car, Intel arrives on the cell phone, and more.

Guest: Patrick Beja

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Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com.

We invite you to read, add to, and amend our show notes at wiki.twit.tv.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Running time: 54:05

Hosts: Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Iyaz Akhtar and Jason Howell

Who has the fastest 4G, is there really a spectrum crisis? Hope for the Internet’s future, and more.

Guest: Danny Sullivan

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Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com.

We invite you to read, add to, and amend our show notes at wiki.twit.tv.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Running time: 49:32

From NAB 2012 Leo talks to Byron Reese Chief Innovation Officer at Demand Media, and Gregory Panos writer of Virtual Reality Sourcebook.

Hosts: Leo Laporte

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Running time: 00:56:46

In 1926 – Sam Warner approves the sound-on-disc system created by Western Electric and creates the Vitaphone company to develop the process to add sound to film.

In 1940 – Vladimir Zworykin and his team from RCA demonstrate the first electron microscope. It measured 10 feet high and weighed half a ton achieving a magnification of 100,000x.

In 1964 – The first AT&T picturephone transcontinental call was made between test displays at Disneyland and the New York World’s Fair.

We ask author Scott Sigler more questions than could fit in the main episode. Plus he tries to guess the name of the dragon.

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We were very honored to be invited to sit and chat with Patrick Hester from the SFSignal podcast about the Sword and Laser show. I was worried we’d have to stand but Patrick was very nice in letting us sit. He also was very nice in listening to us go on and on about our dragon and how we love scifi/fantasy books. But then SFSignal is all about SciFi and fantasy so I guess he might have been interested. Plus they got nominated for a Hugo! So we made it up to him by congratulating them.

Anyway if listening to Veronica Belmont’s voice si at all interesting to you, or you like to hear people talk about awesome things, you might want to check it out.

Get the podcast episode here!