1926 – The National Broadcasting Company radio network opened with 24 stations. It was a joint creation of RCA, General Electric and Westinghouse. AT&T provided the spark for the network by selling WEAF to RCA.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/404533/National-Broadcasting-Co-Inc-NBC

1971 – Intel released the world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004 with an advertisement in Electronic News, though the chip may have been delivered earlier in the spring to some customers. It was the first complete CPU on one chip.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/museum-story-of-intel-4004.html

2001 – Microsoft entered the game console war with the first Xbox going on sale in North America. It pitted Microsoft against Sony’s PS2 just three days before Nintendo’s GameCube went on sale.
http://money.cnn.com/2001/11/15/technology/xbox/index.htm

2013 – Sony’s PlayStation 4 game console went on sale with a big event in New York where Sony rented out the entire Standard Hotel.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/14/sony-launches-playstation-4-fans-go-nuts/

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

1922 – The BBC sent its first daily transmission from station 2LO at Marconi House London. Arthur Burrows, first Director of Programmes, read the first newscast.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/aboutbbcnews/spl/hi/history/noflash/html/1920s.stm

1971 – The American space probe Mariner 9 began orbiting Mars becoming the first spacecraft to successfully orbit another planet.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1971-051A

2007 – The last Direct Current electrical distribution system in the US was shut down by Con Edison in New York.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/off-goes-the-power-current-started-by-thomas-edison/

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

1851 – The first public message was sent on the submarine telegraph cable under the English Channel between Dover, England and Calais, France.

http://books.google.com/books?id=6nM0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=november+13+1851+submarine+telegraph&source=bl&ots=71yU-Y_Dva&sig=mZmBJzfqw9fKkwaYU-4xVL_v-5k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XZJ6UvetBMGRiAL1noGIBA&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=november%2013%201851%20submarine%20telegraph&f=false

1982 – 15-year-old Scott Safran of Cherry Hill, New Jersey set the world record score on Asteroids. His record stood for 27 years, the longest-running high score in videogame history.

https://www.wired.com/2010/04/asteroids-record/

1983 – The MIT TX-0, an experimental transistorized computer, was brought back to life for the last time at The Computer Museum in Marlboro, Massachusetts.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/November/13/

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

1946 – The US Army held a contest between an abacus used by Kiyoshi Matsuzaki from Japan’s postal ministry and an electric calculator operated by Private Thomas Nathan Wood. The abacus won 4 to 1.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/11/1112abacus-beats-calculator/

1970 – The Oregon Highway Divisions made an ill-advised attempt to destroy a dead whale by blowing it up with explosives. The results, documented by local news, eventually became Internet gold as the “exploding whale” video.
http://www.offbeatoregon.com/H001_ExplodWhale.html

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee published a formal proposal for a hypertext project. The proposal referred to a “web of information nodes” and implementing “browsers” The project eventually became the World Wide Web.

http://www.w3.org/Proposal

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