1710 – The Statute of Anne entered into force in Great Britain. The statute ended the practice of copyright being enforced by the Stationer’s Guild under the licensing act and for the first time granted copyright to authors.

In 1943 – Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania began work on the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer known as ENIAC. The machine that was synonymous for years with computer, could perform 5,000 additions per second.

In 2003 – British Airways and Air France announced the retirement of all Concorde supersonic jets. After a quarter century of supersonic speeds, passengers in the 21st century would go slower than those who flew in the late 20th century.

In 1860 – Parisian typesetter and inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s uses his Phonoautogram to record sound onto paper but has no way to pay it back.

In 1919 – Presper Eckert was born in Philadelphia. Eckert became famous for his work, with John Mauchly on the ENIAC project.

In 1959 – NASA publicly announced the selection of the United States’ first seven astronauts, who quickly became known as the “Mercury Seven”.

In 1953 – The major studios were inspired by the 1952 3D hit Bwana Devil. Columbia beat Warner Brothers’ House of Wax to the theatre to make Man in the Dark the first 3D motion picture produced and released by a major studio.

In 1959 – The Department of Defense called a meeting at the University of Pennsylvania to define the objectives for a new Common Business Language. Captain Grace Hopper led the group that kicked off COBOL.

1991 – A team moved from Sun Microsystems to work in secret on its “Oak” development project, which was later re-named “Java.”

In 1927 – The Bell System sent live TV images of Herbert Hoover, then the Secretary of Commerce, over telephone lines from Washington, D.C. to an auditorium in Manhattan. It was the first public demonstration in the U.S. of long-distance television transmission.

In 1964 – IBM unveiled the System/360 line of mainframe computers, its most successful computer system. Called the “360” because it was meant to address all possible sizes and types of customer with one unified software-compatible architecture.

In 1969 – The first Request For Comment, RFC 1 put together by Steve Crocker was distributed on the newly operational ARPANET. RFCs describe methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet.