In 1839 – At a crowded meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences, Louis Daguerre demonstrated the process of making photos called daguerreotypes.

In 1906 – Philo Farnsworth was born on Indian Creek in Beaver County, Utah. He would grow up to inspire the beloved professor character on Futurama. He also gets credit for Inventing the first completely electronic television.

In 1934 – Gordon Bell was born in Kirksville, Missouri. He would grow up to help build PDP computers and oversee the development of DEC’s VAX series.

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In 1937 – The first Frequency Modulation or FM radio permit was granted to W1XOJ, in Paxton, Massachusetts. It went on the air with scheduled programs in May 1939 and operated with the highest output power (50 kilowatts) granted previous to World War II.

In 1947 – Eight years after William Hewlett and David Packard founded it, Hewlett-Packard was officially incorporated.

In 2005 – The largest and most widespread power outage in history happened on the Indonesian island of Java, affecting almost 100 million people.

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

In 1944 – Larry Ellison was born in the Bronx in New York City. 9 months later after contracting pneumonia he was taken to Chicago to be raised by his Aunt and Uncle. He would grow up to drop out of college, move to Berkeley and co-found Software Development Labs, one of the most successful corporations in history. Today it’s known as Oracle.

In 1982 – Royal Philips Electronics manufactured the world’s first Compact Disc (not counting test pressings) at a Polygram factory in Langenhagen, just outside of Hanover, Germany. The CD was “The Visitors” by Abba.

In 2000 – Nielsen/NetRatings announced that according to their data, more than half (52%) of United States households had internet access for the first time. This confirmed Media Metrix’s report from April which estimated that 51% of US households now had Internet access.

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

In 1989 – A solar flare created a geomagnetic storm that caused three hard drives to fail in an otherwise fault-tolerant system at the Toronto Stock Exchange to fail. This prevented access to critical market data leading the exchange to be shut down for three hours.

In 1993 – Ian Murdock announced the Debian Linux distribution system. The name combined his then girlfriend Debra’s name with his own, Deb-Ian. And now you know how to properly pronounce it.

In 1995 – The first version Microsoft’s Web browser, Internet Explorer 1, debuted. It was based on Mosaic, which Microsoft had licensed from Spyglass Inc.