1962 – NASA launched the Mariner 2 unmanned space mission to Venus.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1962-041A

1989 – The first direct-to-home TV satellite launched from Cape Canaveral. Marco Polo I delivered the British Satellite Broadcasting service to homes in the UK.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1989-067A

2003 – Fairbanks, Alaska got the world’s biggest UPS backup. The city hooked up the world’s largest storage battery, built to provide an uninterrupted power supply of 40 megawatts.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3312118/Worlds-biggest-battery-switched-on-in-Alaska.html

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

1938 – A New York radio station first used the Philips-Miller system of tape recording on a radio broadcast.

http://books.google.com/books?id=G2wGxDT0f2MC&pg=PT526&lpg=PT526&dq=tape+1938+august+26+WQXR&source=bl&ots=Kkuw9uJ6U7&sig=74PYEzrL1Xph_B5PL7ffmuyXcp0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Tr8JUNXJNO3k2wWkmsDABw&ved=0CGAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=tape%201938%20august%2026%20WQXR&f=false

1984 – Miss Manners confronted her first computer issue. The columnist responded to a reader’s concern about typing personal correspondence on a personal computer.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/August/26/

1996 – Netscape Communications Corp. announced it had partnered with several other big companies to create a software company called Navio Corp. Navio was meant to create an operating system to compete with Windows.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Netscape-Startup-Navio-Focuses-on-Non-PC-Users-2969143.php

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

1609 – Galileo Galilei craftily beat a Dutch telescope maker to an appointment with the Doge of Venice. Galileo impressed the Doge and received a lifetime appointment and a doubled salary. Later that autumn, Galileo pointed his telescope to the Moon, and trouble began.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post/400-years-ago-galileos-telescope-wa-2009-08-26/?id=400-years-ago-galileos-telescope-wa-2009-08-26

1981 – Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn. Eight years later on the same day in 1989, Voyager 2 would make its closest approach to Neptune.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/fastfacts.html

1991 – 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Torvalds wrote a newsgroup post about a free operating system he was working on. He said it was “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu.” His OS would eventually be called Linux.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/comp.os.minix/dlNtH7RRrGA

2014 – Amazon announced it had acquired Twitch.TV the popular video game streaming site. Rumors had indicated Google was going to buy the company, but the deal fell through.

http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/08/a-letter-from-the-ceo-august-25-2014/

2016 – NuTonomy began the first public trial of an autonomous taxi service. Customers could hail a self-driving taxi in Singapore’s One North business district. A human engineer sat in the driver’s seat ready to assume control if needed.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/24/mit-spinout-nutonomy-just-beat-uber-to-launch-the-worlds-first-self-driving-taxi/

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

1456 – According to a handwritten note by illustrator Heinrich Cremer, the final binding of the Gutenberg Bible took place.

http://books.google.com/books?id=YOXt9dVq9EcC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=august+24+1456+gutenberg&source=bl&ots=jcDMkkfxNp&sig=ctz_I-jiUtq_lpMtok5oHA2I_EA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jBcHUIucFqOw2wXgv53IDw&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCDgU#v=onepage&q=august%2024%201456%20gutenberg&f=false

1965 – Ted Nelson presented a paper called “A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the Indeterminate” at the Association for Computing Machinery. In it he used the word “hypertext” a term he made up.

https://gigaom.com/2015/08/24/hypertext-50/

1995 – Microsoft released Windows 95. During development it was referred to as Windows 4.0 or by the internal codename “Chicago.”

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-windows-95-launched-20-years-ago-today/

2001 – WebKit received its first commit of code from Apple. The Safari browser appeared two years later and WebKit was open sourced in 2005.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/25/webkit-turns-10-celebrates-a-decade-of-speedy-standards-compli/

2011 – Steve jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, handing over the job to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/24/technology/steve_jobs_resigns/

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