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/

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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.

1675 – Britain’s King Charles II established the observatory at Greenwich with the main purpose of determining precise longitudes to aid in navigation. This purpose led to Greenwich being marked as the prime meridian and later Greenwich Mean Time.

http://books.google.com/books?id=KXFLAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=june+22+1675+greenwich+royal+warrant&source=bl&ots=Wq9jymLyYF&sig=aIu0NBzBNBOKCLwJfhH-gS1D-Pc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=He65UYGiMeWKjALA_IDgDw&ved=0CEYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=june%2022%201675%20greenwich%20royal%20warrant&f=false

1799 – The first definitive prototype metre bars (mètre des Archives) and kilograms were constructed in platinum.

http://www.sizes.com/units/meter.htm

1996 – Quake, the successor to the first-person shooter Doom was released by id Software with music composed by Trent Reznor. The Quake engine offered full real-time 3D rendering and had early support for 3D acceleration through OpenGL. It also added several multiplayer options.

http://rome.ro/news/2016/6/22/happy-20th-birthday-quake

1999 – The first demonstration of live rats directly controlling a robot arm with their thoughts was published by Nature Neuroscience.

https://corporate.dukehealth.org/news-listing/rats-operate-robotic-arm-brain-activity

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

1948 – The Small-Scale Experimental Machine, SSEM took 52 minutes to run its first program, written by Professor Tom Kilburn. SSEM was the first computer to store programs electronically. The SSEM was nicknamed the “Manchester Baby”.

http://curation.cs.manchester.ac.uk/computer50/www.computer50.org/mark1/new.baby.html

1981 – IBM retired the last of its “STRETCH” mainframes. These mainframes were part of the 7000 series that made up the company’s first transistorized computers.

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/other/4375893/IBM-retires-7030–STRETCH–computer–June-21–1981

2004 – SpaceShipOne became the first privately developed piloted vehicle to leave Earth’s atmosphere and reach the edge of space.

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/spaceshipone

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