1890 – Louis Le Prince boarded a train to Paris at Dijon station. Neither he nor his bags ever arrived and his disappearance was never solved. In 1888 he had patented a system for taking 16 pictures a second and playing them back as a moving picture.

https://web.archive.org/web/19991128020048/http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/local_heroes/biogs/biogleprince.shtml

1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, was introduced at the Sherry-Netherland hotel in New York City. One of them caught fire. The demo that was carried live on television did not catch fire.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZYurhbUh_2gC&pg=PA61&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false

1985 – Steve Jobs spent his last day as an employee of Apple after submitting his resignation to the board.

http://gizmodo.com/5639822/25-years-ago-today-steve-jobs-left-apple

1997 – After purchasing NeXT the previous December, bringing Steve Jobs back to the company, the Apple Board named Jobs as interim CEO, replacing Gil Amelio.

http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/16/today-in-history-steve-jobs-returns-to-apple/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1947 – The Association for Computing Machinery was founded as the Eastern Association for Computing Machinery, during a meeting at Columbia University in New York. It developed into the world’s largest organization of computer professionals.

http://www.acm.org/about/history

1947 – RCA released the 12AX7 vacuum tube for public sale. The miniature dual triode vacuum tube with high voltage gain became popular with tube amplifier enthusiasts and has been in continuous production since. The tube is also known as the ECC83 in the European Union.

https://www.effectrode.com/knowledge-base/the-12ax7-tube-the-cornerstone-of-guitar-tone/

2008 – Electronics retailer Best Buy acquired the Napster music service for $121 million, preventing the once dominating music-sharing service from going out of business.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/best-buy-bails-out-failing-napster/

2014 – Microsoft announced they would purchase Mojang, makers of the Minecraft universe. Mojang’s founders, Notch, Carl, and Jakob, announced they would leave the company.

https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1956 – IBM introduced the IBM 350 disk storage unit for the RAMAC 305, the first commercial computer to use magnetic disk storage.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_350.html

1959 – After 33.5 hours of flight, Luna 2 became the first human-made object to strike the moon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/solarsystem/space_missions/luna_2

2000 – Microsoft released Windows ME. The ME stood for Millenium Edition but deserving or not, would eventually become code for a bad or unnecessary OS update.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-245728.html

2001 – The Nintendo GameCube went on sale in Japan. It was the first Nintendo game console that did not use cartridges.

http://cube.gamespy.com/articles/500/500516p1.html

2015 – The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, LIGO, detected gravitational waves of two merging black holes. It was the first direct observation of gravitational waves.

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/scientists-spot-the-gravity-waves-that-flex-the-universe/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

1983 – Osborne Computer declared bankruptcy in Oakland, California federal bankruptcy court, listing assets of $40 million, liabilities of $45 million, and 600 creditors. Two years earlier, Osborne had produced the first portable computer, the 24-pound Osborne I.

http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v10n3/24_Osborne_Comptuer_Corporat.php

1985 – Nintendo released Super Mario Brothers in Japan. It became the best selling video game for 20 years until it was surpassed by Wii Sports.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20016209-17.html

2000 – The public beta of Apple’s Mac OS X, code named Kodiak, was released. Users had to pay $29.95 for the beta.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2000/09/13Apple-Releases-Mac-OS-X-Public-Beta.html

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.