1943 – Hungarians László and Georg Bíró, while living in Argentina, patented the first successful implementation of the ballpoint pen.

http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa101697.htm

1977 – A few days after going on sale, Apple began shipping the Apple II for the first time.

http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/misc_cmds/misc_cmds-6/calendar/calendars/calendar.computer

2003 – The Spirit Rover launched on a Delta II rocket, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/launch_e.html

2013 – Apple introduced iOS 7 and Apple OS X Mavericks at their Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. They also gave a sneak peek at the new cylindrical Mac Pro and announced their streaming music service called iTunes Radio.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/06/10/apples-packed-wwdc-2013-keynote-now-live

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

1902 – Joe Horn and Frank Hardart opened the first US Automat at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. The waiterless restaurant charged a nickel for most dishes.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1291&dat=20021226&id=vVpUAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ko4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=3964,7574304

1931 – Robert Goddard received a patent for rocket-fueled aircraft design (US. No. 1,809,271). Sadly we do not have a lot of rocket-planes in operation.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=pxxBAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

1986 – The Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center opened to support the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET, which linked five supercomputer centers. NSFNET would eventually allow commercial uses and transition to the open Internet.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/June/9/

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

1637 – Rene Descartes published “Discourse on the Method for Guiding One’s Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences”, which formed the basis of the modern scientific method. It’s also the source of the quote “I think, therefore I am.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=UPGVFEDVc0wC&pg=PA226&lpg=PA226&dq=descartes+1637+june+8&source=bl&ots=IRzDxujrmz&sig=8Zo5pCV6q5e18OY_U4o26FCcwB4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=x3iqUaOyCumdiAK4zIH4DA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=descartes%201637%20june%208&f=false

1949 – George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. The book still affects notions of privacy and inspired the iconic Apple commercial that introduced the Macintosh computer.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell

1955 – Tim Berners-Lee was born in London. He grew up to develop the World Wide Web.

http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Longer.html

1978 – Intel launched the 8086 microprocessor, the first of the long-lived x86 processor architecture line.

https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/x86-approaching-40-still-going-strong/

2008 – Apple announced Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_Announces_Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard/

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

1954 – Computer science hero Alan Turing died. His death was ruled a suicide from eating an apple containing cyanide. Turing formulated the famous Turing test and broke code at Bletchley park during World War II.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/

1975 – Sony introduced the Betamax video recorder for sale. It would lose the format war to VHS but find a niche in broadcast production.

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/this+history+june+1975/6745667/story.html

1980 – The first US solar power plant was dedicated at the Natural Bridge National Monument, Utah.

http://books.google.com/books?id=jC1QAAAAYAAJ&q=natural+bridges+solar+june+7+1980&dq=natural+bridges+solar+june+7+1980&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9sGnUda-E8iaiALLk4DgBQ&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA

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

1933 – The world’s first drive-in movie theater opened in Camden, New Jersey. Richard Hollingshead Jr. had developed the system by using a 1928 Kodak projector mounted on the hood of his car and aimed at a screen pinned to some trees.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-drive-in-movie-theater-opens

1984 – Soviet programmer Alexei Pazhitnov completed the first playable version of Tetris, one of the best-selling video games of all-time, was released. It was popularized by Hank Rogers who bought the rights and distributed it.

http://www.wired.com/2009/06/tetris/

1995 – The Los Angeles Times reported that Father Leonard Boyle was working to put the Vatican’s library on the World Wide Web through a site funded by IBM.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/June/6/

2013 – The Guardian published another leak from Edward Snowden about the PRISM project used to gather data held by Google, Facebook, Apple and other US tech companies. The tech companies denied “back door access” to their systems.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

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