In 1837 – The U.S. Patent Office approved Thomas Davenport’s application for a patent on an “Improvement in Propelling Machinery by Magnetism and Electro-Magnetism.” We’d call it an electric motor.

In 1928 – Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. became the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.

In 1930 – A US patent for a photographing apparatus was issued to George Lewis McCarthy, who called it a Checkograph. It was the first bank check photographing device.

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In 1949 – A modified German V-2 ballistic missile launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, reached an altitude of 244 miles, putting it well above the Kármán line. It was the first U.S. rocket to reach “outer space.”

In 1955 – A boy was born to University of Wisconsin graduate students Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali. He was given up for adoption and taken in by a machinist and his wife in Mountain View, California. They named him Steve Jobs.

In 2011 – The Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from cape Canveral on its final mission.

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In 1893 – Germany’s Imperial Patent Office granted Rudolph Diesel Patent No. 67207 for “a new efficient thermal engine”. We just call it, the Diesel engine.

In 1927 – President Calvin Coolidge signed Public Law no. 632 establishing the Federal Radio Commission which was later replaced by the Federal Communications Commission.

In 1927 – German physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to Wolfgang Pauli, describing the uncertainty principle for the first time. He submitted a paper on the principle for publication the following March.

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In 1857 – Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany. Hertz made key discoveries in optics but also transmitted and received electromagnetic waves and gave his name to the common unit of frequency, Hz.

In 1995 – Chicago stock broker Steve Fossett completed the first hot air balloon flight over Pacific Ocean. At 9600 km it was also the longest baloon flight.

1995 – President Clinton signed an Executive Order directing the declassification of intelligence imagery acquired by the CORONA, ARGON and LANYARD U.S. photo-reconnaissance satellites. More than 860,000 images of the Earth’s surface, collected between 1960 and 1972 were made public.

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In 1937- Waldo Waterman flew the first test flight of the Arrowbile, and found the aircraft easy to fly and virtually spin and stall proof. It is considered the first successful flying car to actually fly.

In 1947 – Edwin H. Land demonstrated his one-step instant camera and film at a meeting of the Optical Society of America. The first Polaroid camera was on sale within two years.

In 1986 – The Legend of Zelda, the first in the ongoing series, was released in Japan for Nintendo’s Famicom console.

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