In 1880 – The Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York was incorporated to install a central generating station in New York City. New Yorkers know it now as ConEd.

In 1903 – Orville Wright successfully made a flight in a heavier-than-air machine that took off from level ground under its own power and was controlled during flight. It’s generally considered the first airplane flight.

In 1997 – John Barger coined the term ‘weblog’ to describe his list of links on his site, Robot Wisdom. Peter Merholz would later shorten it to just ‘blog’.

In 2012 – The W3C announced it had completed the definition of HTML 5.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

In 1935 – A Time magazine article described the use of the pattern of capillaries in the retina as a means of identification called eye prints. Hello biometrics!

In 1947 – John Bardeen and Walter Brattain applied two closely-spaced gold contacts held in place by a plastic wedge to the surface of a small slab of high-purity germanium. It was the next step in the development of the Transistor.

In 2002 – Creative Commons formally launched, unveiling Machine-Readable Copyright Licenses and a revamped website.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.