1886, Karl Benz drove his Patent Motor Wagen on Mannheim’s Ringstraße, reaching a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph) powered by a 0.75-hp one-cylinder four-stroke gasoline engine. It was the first public drive of what is considered the first purpose-built automobile. In 1998 – Danielle Bunten Berry died of lung cancer. She was...

1897 – 23-year-old Guglielmo Marconi received a patent in England for his wireless telegraphy which we now call radio. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. Ltd. was formed a few weeks later. In 1928 W3XK, owned by the Jenkins Television Corporation, went on the air becoming the first television broadcasting station in the US....

In 1979 – Sony introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2. It weighed 14 ounces, was blue and silver, and had a second earphone jack. It was originally marketed in the US as the Sound-About and in the UK as the Stowaway. In 1991 – Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call...

In 1945 – The first draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was published. It discussed the advantages of using just one large internal memory, in which instructions as well as data could be held. In 1948 – Bell Labs introduced the point-contact transistor demonstrated by its inventors, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at...