1876 – Thomas Edison received a US patent for a mimeograph, which combined with an invention by A. B. Dick led to the first widely successful mimeograph machine.
http://museumofprinting.org/pdfs/MOPWinter07.pdf

1908 – For the first time in public, Wilbur Wright showed off the Wright Brothers’ flying machine at the racecourse in Le Mans, France. French doubts about the Wright Brothers’ claims to flight were put to rest for the time being.

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/1908-the-year-the-airplane-went-public-8791602/?no-ist

2007 – Barbara Morgan became the first educator to safely reach space on the US. Space Shuttle Endeavour.

http://idahoptv.org/productions/specials/barbaramorgan/2007Aug8.cfm

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

1944 – IBM officially presented the Mark I computer, also known as the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, or ASCC, to Harvard. The computer produced reliable results and ran continuously.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/markI/markI_chronology5.html

1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering released Japan’s first commercially produced transistor radio, the TR-55, sold under the company’s new name, Sony.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0807/

1966 – Jimmy Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama. He grew up to co-found Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales

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

1943 – Jon Postel was born in Altadena, California. He created the Internet’s address system, and administered it for 30 years as director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/grants-and-awards/awards/postel-service-award/ten-year-tribute-jon-postel

1963 – Skilled hacker, future government prisoner, and eventual famous security expert Kevin Mitnick was born in Van Nuys, California.

http://www.nndb.com/people/448/000022382/

1991 – Tim Berners-Lee posted a short summary of his WorldWideWeb Project to alt.hypertext and pointed to a simple browser and a Web page describing the project. Thus the WWW became a publicly available service on the Internet.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/alt.hypertext/eCTkkOoWTAY/bJGhZyooXzkJ

1997 – At MacWorld in Boston, Microsoft announced it would invest $150 million in Apple, and continue to make Microsoft Office for Mac for at least five years. The two companies also ended their lawsuit.

https://news.microsoft.com/1997/08/06/microsoft-and-apple-affirm-commitment-to-build-next-generation-software-for-macintosh/

2014 – The European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe became the first spacecraft to maneuver alongside a speeding body as it caught up with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28659783

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

1858 – The west end of the first transatlantic cable was completed when the ship Niagara anchored at the Newfoundland coast having laid 1,016 miles of telegraph cable.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-transatlantic-telegraph-cable-completed

1914 – The American Traffic Signal Co. installed their first electric traffic light at East 105th street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.

http://allthingsclevelandohio.blogspot.com/2008/03/cleveland-birthplace-of-first-electric.html

1921 – The first radio broadcast of a baseball game happened on KDKA from Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. Harold W. Arlin announced the game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Philadelphia Phillies.

http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/Recommendations/KDKAFirst1921.htm

2011 – The Juno space probe launched on a mission to explore Jupiter.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/overview/index.html

2012 – The Mars Science Laboratory, known as the Curiosity Rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars in one of the most complicated automated landings ever, involving a sky crane.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/mars-curiosity-rover-lands-successfully-mars/story?id=16934302#.UeHYyz54Zvg

2014 – Justin.TV announced its closure. It had started as a lifecasting channel for Justin Kan and spawned the massively successful Twitch video game streaming channel.

http://gigaom.com/2014/08/05/live-streaming-pioneer-justin-tv-shuts-down-as-company-focuses-on-twitch/

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