In 1897 – Karl Elsener legally registered his “soldiers’ knife” for use by the Swiss army. The original had a wooden handle, a blade, a screwdriver and a can opener.

In 1936 – The first radio station with 500,000 watt power began testing as W8XAR in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Test broadcasts took place from 1 AM to 6 AM. The station is now known as KDKA.

In 1997 – 3Com Corp. and U.S. Robotics Corp. completed their merger. The two companies combined US Robotics modems with 3Com’s interface cards.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.