In 1882 – Thomas Edison’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant began operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin.

In 1954 – The USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine, was commissioned at Groton, CT.

In 1980 – Xerox published the Version 1.0 specifications for Ethernet in conjunction with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation.

In 2014 – Microsoft announced its next operating system would be called Windows 10, not Windows 9 and would arrive sometime in 2015.

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In 1920 – The Joseph Horne department store in Pittsburgh ran an advertisement in the Pittsburgh Sun, describing wireless Victrola music being picked up by radio. Amateur Wireless Sets were on sale for $10.

In 1954 – CERN officially came into being. In addition to countless advancements in science, it would go on to foster the invention of the World Wide Web.

In 1994 – Programmers first demonstrated the HotJava prototype browser to executives at Sun Microsystems Inc. It was an attempt to port the Java language to the Web. It worked.

In 1996 – The Nintendo 64 launched in North America spreading its 3D world controlled by an analog stick to a new contintent.

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In 1998 – Microsoft’s Internet Explorer passed Netscape Navigator as the Web browser with the greatest market share, according to a report from the International Data Corporation.

In 2008 – SpaceX launched the Falcon 1, the first ever private spacecraft to enter orbit.

In 2011 – Amazon shook up the tablet market, announcing the the Amazon Kindle Fire 7-inch tablet for $199.

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In 1922 – Scientists at the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory near Washington, DC, demonstrated radar by showing that if a ship passed through a radio wave broadcast between two stations, that ship could be detected.

In 1983 – Richard Stallman announced the GNU project which aimed at the time to develop a free Unix-like operating system.

In 1996 – Kevin Mitnick was indicted on charges he broke into the systems of major software companies, then transferred stolen material to computers at USC via the Internet. Seems prosaic today, but was unheard of at the time.

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