1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company merged with its subsidiary and took the subsidiary’s name, International Business Machines Corporation. Yes it was later shortened to IBM.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/reference/faq_0000001707.html

1989 – The Department of Defense put the NAVSTAR II-1 into orbit, the first of 24 satellites that would make up the global positioning system.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1989-013A

2005 – The domain name YouTube.com was registered. It would eventually become the dominant place to share videos on the Internet.

http://mashable.com/2010/02/14/youtube-birthday/

2011 – IBM’s Watson, a computer system, competed against Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson cleaned up, winning $77,147 to Mr. Jennings’s $24,000 and Mr. Rutter’s $21,600.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/science/17jeopardy-watson.html?pagewanted=all

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1895 – French patent No. 245,032 was filed for appareil servant à l’obtention et à la vision des épreuves chrono-photographiques, AKA the Cinématographe, a combined motion-picture camera and projector.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WVVX4NHS8TwC&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=french+patent+cinematographe+245,032&source=bl&ots=xDfRtz4MgE&sig=Eog12dLJYTYM_xx9YrCq3rkgUJI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sn8xT4TJK66NigLk7qSVAw&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=french%20patent%20cinematographe%20245%2C032&f=false

1946 – ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) the first practical, all-electronic computer was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electronics. The New York Times carried the report the next day.

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/eniac.pdf

2001 – Microsoft gave the first public look at their new version of Windows, called Windows XP, formerly codenamed Whistler.

http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/02/13/technology/microsoft/

2002 – The first version of Microsoft’s .NET was released as part of Visual Studio.NET.

https://news.microsoft.com/2002/02/13/microsoft-launches-xml-web-services-revolution-with-visual-studio-net-and-net-framework/

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1877 – Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone for the first time in public at the Salem Lyceum Hall. The demonstration ended with the sending of the first telephone news dispatch which was received by the Boston Globe.

http://www.salemweb.com/tales/lyceum.shtml

1973 – Along Interstate 71 in Ohio, the first metric distance road signs to be erected in the US were put in place. They informed of the distance between Columbus and Cleveland and Columbus and Cincinnati.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/02/12/loc_ohiodate0212.html

2001 – The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touched down on 433 Eros after transmitting 69 close up pictures. It became the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

http://near.jhuapl.edu/

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1847 – Proud parents Samuel and Nancy welcomed their seventh and last child into the world. Thomas Edison would grow up to embody the word inventor.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/179233/Thomas-Alva-Edison

1970 – With the launch of Osumi 5, Japan became the fourth country (after the US, USSR and France) to place a satellite into orbit using its own rocket.
http://www.kahaku.go.jp/english/exhibitions/permanent/outdoors/index.html

1997 – The Space Shuttle Discovery launched on Mission STS-82 with the objective of making significant upgrades to the scientific capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope. The upgrades helped turn the Hubble from a punchline, to one of the greatest telescopes ever created.
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-82/mission-sts-82.html

2004 – Ben Hammersley wrote a column for The Guardian called “Audible revolution” describing a boom in “radio” on the Internet. He proposed three terms for the new wave of shows, Audioblogging, GuerillaMedia, and Podcasting. It was the first known publication of the term podcasting.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/feb/12/broadcasting.digitalmedia

2016 – Researchers at LIGO published evidence of the first direct observation of gravitational waves in Physical Review Letters. Einstein predicted such waves as part of General Relativity.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/11/10965312/einstein-gravitational-waves-discovered-announced-video

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1958 – Scientists at Lincoln Laboratory at MIT bounced radar signals off the planet Venus, calling it the first measurement of interplanetary distances.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19590319&id=c1EqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YFEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7082,1174229

1996 – Chess’s international grandmaster Garry Kasparov began a six game match against IBM’s Deep Blue. Deep Blue won the first game, the first time that a current world champion had ever been beaten by a computer opponent under regular tournament conditions.

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/watch/html/c.10.html
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/02/0210computer-deep-blue-beats-chess-champ-kasparov/

2004 – While talking about their forthcoming game, Game Neverending, Ludicorp unveiled a side project called Flickr at the O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference in San Diego. It was a service that melded chat rooms with real-time photo sharing.
http://techland.time.com/2014/02/10/flickr-turns-10-the-rise-fall-and-revival-of-a-photo-sharing-community/?curator=MediaREDEF

2009 – One of Motorola’s communication satellites Iridium 33 collided with defunct Russian satellite Kosmos-2251 destroying both. It was an unprecedented space collision.
http://www.space.com/5542-satellite-destroyed-space-collision.html

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.