1954 – At 5:30 PM the world’s first nuclear power station was connected to the power grid in Obninsk, US.S.R., a small town 60 miles south of Moscow.

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2004/obninsk.html

1974 – At 8:01 AM, a supermarket cashier scanned a 10-pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum across a bar-code scanner at Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It was the first product ever checked out by Universal Product Code.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/technology/26barcode.html

1997 – The US Supreme Court struck down a portion of the Communications Decency Act as violating the first amendment protecting free speech.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/26/cda.overturned.hfr/index.html?eref=sitesearch

2014 – Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects lab stole the show at the Google I/O developer conference, with a demonstration of Project Tango’s 3D-mapping capability and Project Ara’s modular phone.

http://mashable.com/2014/06/26/google-project-tango-ara/

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

1967 – The very first Consumer Electronics Show opened in New York occupying the Americana and New York Hilton Hotels. It was devoted to home entertainment electronics and featured such advances as portable color TVs and video tape recorders.

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/first-consumer-electronics-show/

1981 – After six years as a company, Microsoft incorporated in the state of Washington.

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/InvestorServices/FAQ/default.aspx

1998 – Microsoft released Windows 98 with less hype than Windows 95, but more consumer focus.

http://money.cnn.com/1998/06/25/technology/win98_pkg/

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

1963 – The first demonstration of a home video recorder was made at the BBC News Studios in London. A Telcan, short for television in a can, could record up to 20 minutes of black and white television using quarter-inch tape on a reel to reel system.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/aNhfBgCgSByEMns5XPxXqA

1993 – “Severe Tire Damage,” conducted the first known Internet concert. The band set their gear up on the patios of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and sent their show out on the Internet Multicast Backbone, or Mbone.

http://www.std.org/text/press/internetguiden.html

1994 – Geffen Records released the first major label song for digital download. Aerosmith’s “Head First” was available on CompuServe as a .WAV file. It took more than an hour to download.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/go-aerosmith-how-head-first-became-the-first-song-available-for-digital-download-20-years-ago-today

2000 – President Clinton gave his weekly radio address live on the Internet for the first time.

http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/Accomplishments/eightyears-09.html

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

1912 – Alan Turing was born in London, although his father worked for the Indian Civil Service and his parents lived in India. He helped break the code of the German enigma machine and developed the Turing test for artificial intelligence.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/alan_turing

1943 – Vint Cerf was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He grew up to become known as one of the fathers of the Internet, most famously for his co-creation of the protocols underlying TCP/IP.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0148576/bio

1983 – Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel ran the first successful test of the automated, distributed Domain Name System at the University of Southern California School of Engineering’s Information Sciences.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/dns-marks-20th-birthday-128

1996 – The Nintendo 64 launched in Japan becoming the first home console to rely on the analog stick as its primary control.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/09/24/nintendo-64-launching-a-legacy

2005 – Reddit launched online with a submission about the Downing Street memo.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33809408@N00/315068778/in/photostream/

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