1874 – Remington started selling the Sholes and Glidden Typewriter, the first mass-produced typewriter to use the QWERTY layout. 1 and 0 were left off as the lowercase l and upper-case O keys could double for the numbers.

http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=christopher-keep-the-introduction-of-the-sholes-glidden-type-writer-1874

1941 – A 10-second TV commercial for watch and jewelry company Bulova aired at 2:29 PM on NBC-owned WNBT, leading into a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. It was the first legal broadcast TV commercial in the US.

http://mashable.com/2013/08/01/first-tv-commercial-bulova-video/#AJMcFQGtIGqg

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.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907884,00.html#ixzz1wGwqKzYW

1991 – Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call over a privately operated network to Vice Mayor Kaarina Suonio in Tampere. The Prime Minister used Nokia gear on GSM’s original 900MHz band.

http://www.ericssonhistory.com/changing-the-world/World-leadership/Who-was-first/

1984 – The book Neuromancer by William Gibson was published. The cyberpunk novel would go on to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards. The book is credited with popularizing the term cyberspace and laying out a blueprint for what the World Wide Web would become.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/167670/neuro.html

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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.

https://www.wiley.com/legacy/wileychi/wang_archi/supp/appendix_a.pdf

1948 – Bell Labs introduced the point-contact transistor demonstrated by its inventors, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at a press conference in Murray Hill, NJ.

http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1947-invention.html

1948 – The FCC authorization of recording devices in connection with interstate or foreign telephone service went into effect. Users of the service had to be given adequate notice including a tone warning signal at regular intervals.

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-308668A1.pdf

2015 – Apple launched Apple Music, a streaming service for $10 a month along with radio station Beats One.

http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-music-launches-taking-on-spotify/

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

1975 – Steve Wozniak built the first prototype of the Apple I, the first computer to show letters on the screen as you typed them.

http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Geek-Cult-ebook/dp/B000VUCIZO

1995 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the space station Mir, the first-ever docking of a Shuttle to a Space Station.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/07/shuttle-atlantis-mir-realization-program-goal/

2007 – The Apple iPhone went on sale for the first time.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/29/technology/iphone_launches/index.htm

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1928 – Austrian Friedrich Schmiedl launched his first experimental rocket from a balloon 50,000 feet over Graz, Austria. The rocket was not recovered, but later tests were successful leading to rocket delivered mail.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/23/style/stamps-when-the-speed-of-rockets-delivered-the-mail.html

1965 – Officials in the US and Europe conducted the first commercial telephone conversation over satellite Early Bird I. The satellite also began operating for television transmission “live via satellite.”

http://appel.nasa.gov/2010/02/25/ao_1-7_sf_history-html/

1982 – Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo with the famous “blibbet” of horizontal lines in the first O. New packaging, and a comprehensive set of retail dealer support materials came along with the blibbet.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Tina/The-History-of-Microsoft-1982

2011 – Google announced their latest social network attempt. Google + let you put friends in circles and share different things with different circles.

http://readwrite.com/2011/06/28/google_circles_googles_radical_new_social_network

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

1967 – The world’s first ATM was installed at a Barclays Bank branch in Enfield Town, England, United Kingdom.

http://www.enfieldindependent.co.uk/news/8328017.Cash_machine_plaque_unveiled_in_Enfield_Town/

1972 – Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney filed incorporation papers for Atari, Inc. and got ready to release its first product, a game called Pong.

http://techland.time.com/2012/06/27/atari-at-40-catching-up-with-founder-nolan-bushnell/

1995 – Spyglass Inc. went public, the year after it began distributing its Spyglass Mosaic Web browser. The Spyglass browser powered the first version of Internet Explorer and had code in IE all the way up to IE 7.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Spyglass(R)+announces+initial+public+offering.-a017142114

2008 – Bill Gates spent his last day as an employee of the company he founded, Microsoft, to focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He remained Chairman of the Board.

http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/june-27-2008-bill-gates-retires-13831280

2012 – Sergey Brin interrupted a Google announcement of the new Google + app to show off the Project Glass smart glasses by having sky divers wearing the prototypes, jump out of a zeppelin and land on the Moscone Convention Center in downtown San Francisco, while streaming video in a Google hangout.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/googlers-skydive-wearing-google-glasses-broadcast-jump-live-to-google/

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