1888 – Mr. George Gouraud introduced the Edison phonograph to London in a press conference, including the playing of a piano and cornet recording of Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord,” one of the first recordings of music ever made.
http://diamond.boisestate.edu/GaS/sullivan/html/historic.html

1894 – The first wireless transmission of information using Morse code was demonstrated by Oliver Lodge during a meeting of the British Association at Oxford. A message was transmitted about 50 meters from the old Clarendon Laboratory to the lecture theater of the University Museum.
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0262313421

1940 – John Atanasoff finished a paper describing the Atanasoff Berry Computer, or ABC, the computer he designed with Clifford Berry to solve simultaneous linear equations.

http://jva.cs.iastate.edu/courtcase.php

1989 – Sega launched the Genesis console in the US. It had been released in Japan the previous October as the ‘Mega Drive.’
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-true-16-bit-experience-segas-genesis-turns-25

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1888 – John Logie Baird was born in Helensburgh, Scotland. He would grow up to invent the first working television system in the world.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/baird_logie.shtml

1912 – The US Department of Commerce issued its first experimental radio license in compliance with the International Radio Convention and Radio Act of 1912. St. Joseph’s College received a license with serial number 1 to operate 2 kilowatts station 3XJ.

http://www.nrcdxas.org/articles/1stfacts.txt

2004 – Adam Curry launched an RSS feed of audio recordings called “Daily Source Code” and podcasting became a thing.

http://radio-weblogs.com/0001014/categories/dailySourceCode/2004/08/13.html

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1877 – Thomas Edison sketched his idea for the phonograph, and may have even completed a model. The first working model wasn’t completed until December 6.

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/recon/jb_recon_phongrph_1.html

1960 – The first NASA communications satellite, Echo 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral. The satellite was a balloon of mylar polyester film.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1960-009A

1977 – The space shuttle Enterprise carried out its first free flight test, when the orbiter was released from the back of a 747 in flight.

http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/aug-12-1977-shuttle-enterprise-test-9563114

1981 – IBM introduced the model 5150 personal computer. It had a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor and used Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_birth.html

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1942 – Hedy Markey and composer George Antheil received a US patent for a frequency-hopping device. The technique has led to many advancements in wireless technology including Wi-Fi. Markey was better known under her stage name of Hedy Lamarr.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=R4BYAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

1950 – Steve Wozniak was born in San Jose, California. He would grow up to invent the first successful personal computer, and revolutionize desktop computing.
http://mashable.com/category/steve-wozniak/

1965 – Shinji Mikami was born in Japan. He grew up to become a video game designer for Capcom, revolutionizing survival-horror games with his popular series, Resident Evil.
https://www.giantbomb.com/shinji-mikami/3040-32999/

1994 – Net Market founder Dan Kohn watched his friend buy a Sting CD online from Net Market using his credit card. This is sometimes considered the first ecommerce transaction.
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2015/11/26/the-first-ecommerce-transaction-wasnt-a-pizza-hut-pizza-or-weed-it-was-a-sting-cd/

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