1942 – Germany conducted the first successful test of the V-2/A4 rocket, launched from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde. It traveled 118 miles.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-conducts-first-successful-v-2-rocket-test

1950 – John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley received US patents for circuits that would eventually be called the transistor.

https://www.google.com/patents/US2524035?dq=2,524,035&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_bwVVJGDOorioAS14IHwBg&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA

1967 – Air Force Major William “Pete” Knight flew the rocket-powered X-15 aircraft to 4,520 mph, Mach 6.72. That is the fastest manned aircraft ever flown.

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/x-15-walkaround-22512890/

1972 – The first USA/Japan Computer Conference was held in Tokyo.

http://books.google.com/books/about/First_USA_Japan_Computer_Conference_proc.html?id=eY4mAAAAMAAJ

1985 – STS-51J lifted off Sending the Space Shuttle Atlantis on its maiden flight. It was the fourth shuttle created and eventually became the last shuttle to fly in July 2011.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-51J.html

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

1925 – John Logie Baird performed the first test of a working television system. It delivered a grayscale 30-line vertically scanned image, at five frames per second. After a ventriloquist’s dummy appeared on screen, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton became the first person televised in full tonal range.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/research/general/tvstory2

1955 – ENIAC was shut down for the last time. After 11 years running at 5,000 operations a second and taking up 1,000 square feet of floor space, it had earned its retirement.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/October/2/

1996 – US President Bill Clinton signed amendments to the Freedom of Information Act requiring the US government to make electronic documents available online.

http://www.justice.gov/oip/foia_updates/Vol_XVII_4/page2.htm

2015 – Google officially reorganized, merging with a new parent company called Alphabet. Subsidiaries included Google, Google Fiber, Calico and Life Sciences, Google Ventures and Google Capital, Nest, and Google X. Sundar Pichai was named CEO of Google while Larry Page became CEO of Alphabet and Sergey Brin became President of Alphabet.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000119312515336577/0001193125-15-336577-index.htm

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

1958 – The National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics was officially absorbed by the brand new National Aeronautics and Space Agency. Another expanded government bureaucracy that was only good for putting people on the moon.

http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/nasa.html

1971 – The first clinical human CT scan was performed on a middle aged lady with a suspected frontal lobe tumor, at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital in South London.

https://www.birpublications.org/doi/pdf/10.1259/bjr/29444122

1982 – Sony started selling the first CD players to the public, the CDP-101 for 168,000 yen (that’s about $730 US). At the time you could get Billy Joel’s album 52nd street on CD– and soon many more.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/SonyHistory/2-09.html

2003 – 4Chan launched its main page, intended as a sister-site to the Japanese 2Chan for discussions of manga and anime. They provided the fertile ground for the growth of lolcats, Rickrolling, Anonymous, Pedobear and more.

http://www.4chan.org/news?all#2

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