In 1951 – Bell Labs held a press conference announcing the invention of the junction transistor. Dr. William Shockley was featured at the conference.

In 1956 – The five-year-old MIT computer Whirlwind added the ability to input data directly with a keyboard. Programmers began to enjoy independence from punch cards.

In 1996 – Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched a free web email service called HoTMaiL, a play on HTML. Microsoft bought it a year later, but still calls it Hotmail.

1886, Karl Benz drove his Patent Motor Wagen on Mannheim’s Ringstraße, reaching a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph) powered by a 0.75-hp one-cylinder four-stroke gasoline engine. It was the first public drive of what is considered the first purpose-built automobile.

In 1998 – Danielle Bunten Berry died of lung cancer. She was a pioneering game designer most famous for creating the multiplayer game M.U.L.E. in 1983.

In 1999 – At the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, Billy Mitchell became the first ever to achieve a perfect score on Pac-Man.

1897 – 23-year-old Guglielmo Marconi received a patent in England for his wireless telegraphy which we now call radio. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. Ltd. was formed a few weeks later.

In 1928 W3XK, owned by the Jenkins Television Corporation, went on the air becoming the first television broadcasting station in the US.

In 2001 – Bram Cohen first revealed BitTorrent on a Yahoo group called decentralization.

In 1979 – Sony introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2. It weighed 14 ounces, was blue and silver, and had a second earphone jack. It was originally marketed in the US as the Sound-About and in the UK as the Stowaway.

In 1991 – Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call over a privately operated network to Vice Mayor Kaarina Suonio in Tampere. The Prime Minister used Nokia gear on GSM’s original 900MHz band.

In 2008 – Bill Gates retired as an employee of Microsoft, to focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He remained Chairman pf the Board.

In 1945 – The first draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was published. It discussed the advantages of using just one large internal memory, in which instructions as well as data could be held.

In 1948 – Bell Labs introduced the point-contact transistor demonstrated by its inventors, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at a press conference in Murray Hill, NJ.

In 1948 – The FCC authorisation of recording devices in connection with interstate or foreign telephone service went into effect. Users of the service had to be given adequate notice including a tone warning signal at regular intervals.

In 1975 – Steve Wozniak built the first prototype of the Apple I, the first computer to show letters on the screen as you typed them.

In 1995 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the space station Mir, the first-ever docking of a Shuttle to a Space Station.

In 2007 – The Apple iPhone went on sale for the first time.

In 1928 – Austrian Friedrich Schmiedl launched his first experimental rocket from a balloon 50,000 feet over Graz, Austria,. The rocket was not recovered, but laster tests were successful leading to rocket delivered mail.

In 1965 – Officials in the US and Europe conducted the first commercial telephone conversation over satellite Early Bird I. The satellite also began operation for television transmission “live via satellite” as well.

In 1982 – Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo with the famous “blibbet” of horizontal lines in the first O. New packaging, and a comprehensive set of retail dealer support materials came along with the blibbet.

In 1967 – The world’s first ATM was installed at a Barclays Bank branch in Enfield Town, England, United Kingdom.

In 1978 – Seasat, an experimental U.S. ocean surveillance satellite was launched. The satellite was designed to test oceanographic sensors.

In 1995 – Spyglass Inc. went public, the year after it began distributing its Spyglass Mosaic Web browser. The Spyglass browser powered the first version of Internet Explorer and had code in IE all the way up to IE 7.

In 1954 – At 5:30 PM the world’s first nuclear power station was connected to the power grid Obninsk, U.S.S.R., a small town 60 miles south of Moscow.

In 1974 – At 8:01 AM, a supermarket cashier scanned a 10-pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum across a bar-code scanner at Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It was the first product ever checked out by Universal Product Code.

In 1997 – The US Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Communications Decency Act as violating the first amendment protecting free speech.

In 1967 – The very first Consumer Electronics Show opened in New York occupying the Americana and New York Hilton Hotels. It was devoted to home entertainment electronics and featured such advances as portable color TVs and video tape recorders.

In 1981 – After six years as a company, Microsoft incorporated in the state of Washington.

And In 1998 – Microsoft released Windows 98 with less hype than Windows 95, but more consumer focus. Windows 98 was the last version of Windows that was based on DOS.