1675 – Gottfreid Leibniz wrote the integral sign in an unpublished manuscript. It’s a sign that would later haunt the nightmares of students and be widely misapplied on blackboards in movies. So happy Integral Day!

http://books.google.com/books?id=bOIGAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA166&lpg=PA166&dq=leibniz+writes+integral&source=bl&ots=U_vboOt1rM&sig=ojXqmr8IEIWcrbOdC2UlM94fW5g&hl=en&ei=uyWbTr2dCdHbiALn_f3WBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=leibniz%20writes%20integral&f=false

1969 – The first ever computer to computer link was established on the ARPANET. UCLA student Charley Kline sent the characters l and o to Stanford. The connection crashed before he could finish sending ‘login’. The Internet has been crashy right from the start.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/birthplace-of-the-internet-celebrates-111333

1988 – Sega launched the Mega Drive console in Japan. It would be released elsewhere in the world later as the ‘Genesis.’

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-true-16-bit-experience-segas-genesis-turns-25

1998 – The Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-95.html

2013 – Motorola announced its modular phone project called Project ARA. It would end up becoming Google’s project after Google sold Motorola.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/29/motorola-project-ara-modular-smartphone/

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

1793 – Eli Whitney applied to patent his improved cotton gin, capable of cleaning 50 pounds of lint per day, and powering patent metaphors and arguments for centuries to come.

http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=1028

1955 – A pair of proud Seattle parents welcomed their new son into the world, having no idea he would become one of the most loved and hated men of all time. Happy birthday William Henry Gates the third. You know him as Bill.

http://www.biography.com/people/bill-gates-9307520

1998 – President Bill Clinton signed into law the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, making it illegal for you to use computers the way they were designed to be used, if big companies didn’t want you to.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/dmca-ten-years-unintended-consequences

2014 – The W3C published its recommendation of HTML5, the final version of the standard. It included the video and canvas tags among other improvements.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/

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

1904 – The first underground New York City subway line opened. The line ran from City Hall in lower Manhattan through Grand Central, Times Square and ended north in Harlem. Rides cost five cents.

http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/The_New_York_Subway_Souvenir_(1904)

1994 – HotWired launched bringing with it the first large quantity sales of banner ads. AT&T, Zima, MCI, Volvo, Club Med and 1-800-COLLECT all plunked down for the privilege.

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/happy-birthday-digital-advertising/139964/

2005 – The European Space Agency launched its first satellite, a micro-satellite called the SSETI Express Satellite, designed and built by European students.

http://www.esa.int/esaMI/sseti_express/index.html

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

1936 – The first electric generator went into full operation at Hoover Dam, about a month after President Roosevelt had dedicated the dam and tried to encourage people to call it the Boulder Dam.

https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4399466/First-Hoover-Dam-electric-generator-goes-into-full-operation–October-26–1936

1992 – Software deployment issues in CAD, the new ambulance dispatch system in London, caused 30-45 deaths. Poor training, a memory leak and no load testing contributed to the failure.

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/a.finkelstein/las/lascase0.9.pdf

2004 – Apple debuted the iPod photo, capable of displaying digital photographs and album art on a built-in color screen.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/10/26Apple-Introduces-iPod-Photo.html

2012 – Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system went on sale, with its tile-based start screen.

http://news.microsoft.com/2012/10/25/windows-8-arrives/

2016 – Microsoft announced the Surface Studio, an all-in-one desktop PC with a touchscreen that could fold down almost flat on a desk. It worked with the new Surface Dial input device and sold for $2,999.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/26/13380462/microsoft-surface-studio-pc-computer-announced-features-price-release-date

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