In 1871 – Andrew S. Hallidie received a patent for an “endless wire rope way” which he would put into practice as the cable car system in San Francisco, California.

In 1882 – Thomas Edison received a patent for adding a carbon microphone to the telephone. The patent described finely divided conducting material, like carbon, between metal cups mounted on arms that attached to the mouthpiece diaphragm.

In 1928 – Anatol M. Josepho received a the first U.S. patent for a fully automatic photographic film developing machine. The Photomaton better known as a PhotoBooth in the US still survives as an app and in dark corners of subway stations.

In 1949 – The first synchrotron installed at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, reached its design energy of 300 MeV.

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In 1969 – The Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 spacecraft successfully docked in orbit. Yevgeny Khrunov moved from Soyuz-5 to Soyuz-4 and Alexei Yeliseyev went from 4 to 5, marking the first time spacefarers went up in one craft and returned to Earth in another.

In 1986 – The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) met for the first time in San Diego to supervise the design and deployment of Internet protocol.

In 2007 – Blizzard released the first expansion to it’s wildly successful World of Warcraft game. The Burning Crusade raised the level cap and allowed players flying mounts, at least when they were in Outland.

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In 1759 – The British Museum, in Bloomsbury, London, the world’s oldest public national museum, opened to the public. Entry was free and given to ‘all studious and curious Persons’.

In 2001 – Wikipedia, the free Wiki content encyclopedia, went online as a feeder project for Nupedia, an expert-written online encyclopedia.

In 2005 – Thanks to a solar flare, ESA’s SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovered calcium, aluminium, silicon and iron – in Mare Crisium on the moon.

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