Tech History Today

In 105 – Ts’ai Lun demonstrated his process for making paper to the Han emperor in China. He probably didn’t invent it, but he certainly turned it into an industry for the first time. And the industry still survives 20 centuries later even int he face of the computers that plot its doom.

In 1985 – The Southern New England Telephone Company turned on ConnNet, the nation’s first local, public packet-switching network. Customers could access CompuServ, NewsNet and other services at a blistering 4,800 to 56,000 bits per second. The service’s X.25 protocol went obsolete in the 1990s with the popularity of the Internet Protocol.

In 2011 – Apple began selling the iPad 2, a thinner version of the first iPad, that also included a camera.

In 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell spoke the immortal words “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.” over the a telephone in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant from the next room. It is widely considered the first instance of someone using technology when they bloody well could have just got up and spoke to someone in person. It is also widely considered the first phone call.

In 1891 – Almon B. Strowger was issued a U.S. patent for his electromechanical switch to automate a telephone exchange. Strowger wasn’t the first to think of of automatic switching but he was the first to make a practical switch.

In 2000 -The Nasdaq hit 5,048.62, the highest point of the dot-com boom. The bust began the next day.

In 1948 – The University of California at Berkeley and the Atomic Energy Commission announced the artificial production of mesons using the 184-inch cyclotron at the university’s Radiation Laboratory.

In 1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launched, carrying a human dummy and and the dog Chernushka. It completed 1 orbit and was successfully recovered upon return.

In 2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-133 made its final landing after 39 flights.

In 1955 – Doug Ross demonstrated the Director tape for MIT’s Whirlwind machine, the first digital computer with real-time text and graphics. The idea of the Director Tape was to allow multiple problems to be read by the computer in one session without humans having to intervene and change tapes. IN other words an operating system.

In 1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4. Some credit Adams with accidentally predicting the PDA and smartphone.

In 1979 – Philips publicly demonstrated a prototype of an optical digital audio disc at a press conference called “Philips Introduces Compact Disc”

In 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for an “Improvement in Telegraphy” (No.174,465) which established the principle of bidirectional signals that made the telephone possible.

In 1926 – The first successful Transatlantic telephone call was placed between New York City and London. Transatlantic service began the following year at $75 a minute.

In 1994 – The Supreme Court found that 2 Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh Pretty Woman” was fair use, and not a violation of copyright, thus ensuring the future of The Onion.

In 1886 – The first alternating current power plant in the US was put into regular operation in Great Barrington, Massachusetts

In 1937 – The first woman in space and only woman ever to fly solo in space, Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was born in the Yaroslavl region of Russia.

In 1992 – The first media-hyped computer virus reached fever pitch as the Michelangelo boot sector virus began to affect computers. Worldwide catastrophe did not follow.

In 1975 – The Homebrew Computer Club, held its first meeting in a the garage of Gordon French in Menlo Park, California. 32 people showed up for the first meeting. John Draper, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were some of the more famous members of the club.

In 1981 – Sinclair Research launched the ZX81 in Britain for £69.95 and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world. It was much more successful than it’s predecessor the ZX80.

In 1982 Four days after it’s twin, the second of two Soviet probes to Venus, the Venera 14 landed on the planet. Venera 13 and 14 would continue to send data until 1983.

In 1976 – The first Freon-cooled Cray-1 supercomputer was shipped to Los Alamos Laboratories, in New Mexico at a cost of $19,000,000.

In 2000 – The Sony PlayStation 2 went on sale in Japan.

In 2007 – Election Day was held in Estonia, and for the first time in the world, voters were allowed to vote on the Internet. Approximately 30,000 voters took advantage of electronic voting. Ballots had to be completed three days before election day.

In 1847 – In Ediinburgh, Scotland, an expert vocal physiology and elocution welcomed his newborn son into the world. He was named after his father. Alexander Graham Bell would gon to become synonymous with the telephone.

In 1885 – The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was incorporated in New York State as the subsidiary of American Bell Telephone.

In 1966- The BBC announces plans to begin broadcasting television programmes in colour the following year, becoming the first European broadcaster to provide regular colour broadcasts.

In 1908 – Gabriel Lippman proposed using a series of lenses at a picture’s surface instead of opaque barrier lines, allowing three dimensional pictures. He titled his presentation to the French Academy of Sciences “La Photographie Integral”.

In 1983 – CBS Records launches the first major compact disc music marketing campaign, launching 16 titles. CDs had begun sale to the public the previous October in Japan.

In 2010 – The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany rejected legislation requiring electronic communications traffic data retention for a period of 6 months as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.