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

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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.

1921 – The first facsimile was transmitted by radio across the Atlantic Ocean using the Belinograph invented by Edouard Belin. A message written by C. V. Van Anda, managing editor of The New York Times and addressed to the Matin in Paris, was sent in seven minutes.

http://todayinsci.com/B/Belin_Edouard/Belinogram1921-NYT.htm

1988 – A computer halted an engine test in preparation for the launch of the space shuttle Discovery. The flight would be the first since the Challenger explosion in 1986.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/August/4/

2007 – NASA’s Phoenix spaceship launched on its mission to survey the Martian Arctic in search of water, geological discoveries, and evidence of conditions for biological life.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/launch/index.html

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