In 1959 – The first experimental hovercraft, Christopher Cockerell’s SRN-1 made its first trials at Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

In 1978 – Texas Instruments introduced the Speak & Spell, the first electronic duplication of the human vocal tract on a single chip of silicon. It used linear predictive coding to make a mathematical model of the human vocal tract and predict a speech sample.

In 1983 – IRM took its Japan Capsule Computer subsidiary and formed Capcom Company, Limited “for the purpose of selling software..”

In 1997 – Philippe Kahn took the first cameraphone photograph of his newborn daughter and then wirelessly transmitted the photo to more than 2,000 people around the world. He had hacked together a digital camera and a phone. Kahn went on to form the company LightSurf.

In 1998 – Compaq Computer paid $9.1 billion to acquire what remained of Digital Equipment Corporation, the company that had brought the world PDP and VAX.

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In 1943 – Hungarians László and Georg Bíró, while living in Argentina, patented the first successful implementation of the ballpoint pen.

In 1977 – A few days after going on sale, Apple began shipping the Apple II for the first time.

In 2003 – The Spirit Rover launched on a Delta II rocket, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.

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

In 1902 – Joe Horn and Frank Hardart opened the first US Automat at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. The waiterless restaurant charged a nickel for most dishes.

In 1931 – Robert Goddard received a patent for rocket-fueled aircraft design (U.S. No. 1,809,271). Sadly we do not have a lot of rocket-planes in operation.

In 1986 – The Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center opened to support the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET, which linked five supercomputer centers. NSFNET would eventually allow commercial uses and transition to the open Internet.

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

In 1637 – Rene Descartes published “Discourse on the Method for Guiding One’s Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences”, which formed the basis of the modern scientific method. It’s also the source of the quote “I think, therefore I am.”

In 1949 – George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. The book still affects notions of privacy and inspired the iconic Apple commercial that introduced the Macintosh computer.

In 1955 – Tim Berners-Lee was born in London. He grew up to develop the World Wide Web.

In 2008 – Apple announced Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

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