Tech History Today

In 1927 – The first fully electronic television system is demonstrated by Philo Taylor Farnsworth in San Francisco.

In 1979 – The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, ESPN, makes its debut. It will become one of the main drivers of cable TV adoption and one of the main factors in the switch to Internet television.

In 1981 – The first large parallel processing computer, ILLIAC IV, ends its nearly decade-long life at the University of Illinois.

In 1947 – The aircraft-carrier Midway became the first U.S. vessel from which a long-range rocket was launched. The rocket had a mishap though, and exploded at 5,000 feet.

In 1954 – US President Eisenhower waved a ceremonial “neutron wand” over a neutron counter in Denver, Colorado, to signal a bulldozer in Shippingport, Pennsylvania to begin construction on the first commercial nuclear power plant. It was part of the “Atoms for Peace” program.

In 1997 – The USS Grace Murray Hopper, guided missile destroyer, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in San Francisco, named after the computer pioneer.

In 1977 – NASA launched Voyager 1 after a brief delay. Although it was launched 16 days after Voyager 2, it’s faster flight path would take it past Jupiter first.

In 1980 – The last IBM 7030, AKA STRETCH, mainframe computer was decommissioned at Brigham Young University.

In 1984 – STS-41-D ends with the landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery after its maiden voyage.

In 1888 – George Eastman was issued U.S. patent No. 388,850 for his roll-film box camera.

In 1956 – IBM introduced the IBM 350 Disk storage unit for the RAMAC 305, the first commercial computer to use magnetic disk storage.

In 1998 – Larry Page and Sergey Brin filed for incorporation of Google, allowing them to cash a $100,000 check Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun, had written to Google Inc.

In 1930 – An experimental electric engine was put in service by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad between Hoboken and Montclair, NJ. Thomas Edison served as engineer at the throttle.

In 1976 – Viking 2 landed on Mars and began taking high resolution pictures, measuring the atmosphere and surface, and look for evidence of life.

In 1993 – Infogear filed an application for a U.S. trademark on “I PHONE” for its “communications terminals. The company would later register “IPhone” as well. Cisco acquired Infogear in 2000 and later worked out a deal with Apple to share the name.

In 1859 – A unique combination of solar events including a magnetic explosion severely affected the young telegraph network in North America and Europe. Wires shorted out, fires started and some machines reportedly worked even when disconnected from batteries.

1997 – IBM announced that its RS/6000 SP model parallel supercomputer, was now 58 percent faster than Deep Blue, the computer that beat Kasparov at chess.

In 2001 – At ECTS in London, Blizzard announced an online RPG version of its popular Warcraft franchise, called “World of Warcraft”.

In 1902 -Georges Méliès’ Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) debuted in France. It is often considered the first real science fiction film.

In 1994 – The United States Library of Congress held the first of several meetings to plan the conversion of its materials to digital form to make them accessible by computer networks.

In 1996 – Apple released its Pippin game console in the US. The idea was to provide an inexpensive game-focused computer. Apple licensed third parties like Bandai to make Pippin consoles.

1897 – Thomas Edison received a patent for the kinetographic camera, the forerunner of the motion picture film projector.

In 1994 – Stockholders approved the merger of Aldus Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc. It united the two driving forces behind desktop publishing software. Aldus Pagemaker became Adobe Pagemaker.

In 1997 – The developer release of Apple’s new OS, code name Grail1Z4 / Titan1U was released. It was known formally as Rhapsody and would evolve into OS X.. l

In 1885 – Gottleib Daimler received a patent for adding an internal combustion engine to a bicycle to make the first gasoline-driven motorcycle.

1963 – A direct line of communication between the leaders of the USA and USSR, dubbed “The Hotline” began operation.

In 1969 – BBN delivered the first Interface Message Processor (IMP) to the Network Measurements Center at UCLA. It was built from a Honeywell DDP 516 computer with 12K of memory, and would be used in October to make the first Internet connection with Stanford. Graduate students Vinton Cerf, Steve Crocker, Bill Naylor, Jon Postel, and Mike Wingfield were charged with installation.

1831 – Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction which is used in power generation and power transmission by generators, transformers, induction motors, electric motors, synchronous motors, and solenoids.

In 1965 – Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper, orbiting 100 miles above the Earth in Gemini 5 talked with aquanaut M. Scott Carpenter in Sealab II, 205 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. It happened to be Cooper’s wedding anniversary.

In 1990 – The British Computer Misuse Act went into effect. The Act resulted from a long debate in the 1980s over failed prosecutions of hackers.