1830 – America’s first native locomotive, the “Tom Thumb” lost a race to a draft horse at Ellicotts Mills, Maryland.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Bgno_pNojO4C&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=september+18+1830+steam+engine&source=bl&ots=mhgjtxUFGL&sig=ikW1TWyC2VGa6oLicl5DUATeVnE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5RwkUN2fBa3riQLW8oDwBw&ved=0CGUQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=september%2018%201830%20steam%20engine&f=false

1927 – The Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System went on the air with 47 radio stations. Within two years it would be sold and become the Columbia Broadcasting System and later simply CBS.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1985-04-19/news/0290180286_1_columbia-broadcasting-system-turner-broadcasting-cbs-television-network

1998 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers aka ICANN was created in order to take over Internet administrative tasks from the US Government. The most famous of those tasks is overseeing the Domain Name System.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/923082/ICANN

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1822 – Jean-François Champollion, permanent secretary of the French Académie des Inscriptions, presented his Lettre a M. Dacier, describing his solution to the mystery of the Hieroglyphic inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone. A nifty bit of decryption.
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/philology/gallery/champollion.html

1991 – The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) was posted to a Finnish FTP server in Helsinki. Originator Linus Torvalds wanted to call the OS FreaX, but the FTP admin didn’t like the name and renamed it Linux.
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/The-history-of-Linux-1331088.html

2007 – AOL announced plans to refocus the company on advertising and relocate its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Virginia to New York City.

http://observer.com/2007/09/aol-to-move-corporate-headquarters-to-770-broadway/

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

1890 – Louis Le Prince boarded a train to Paris at Dijon station. Neither he nor his bags ever arrived and his disappearance was never solved. In 188 he had patented a system for taking 16 pictures a second and playing them back as a moving picture.

https://web.archive.org/web/19991128020048/http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/local_heroes/biogs/biogleprince.shtml

1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, was introduced at the Sherry-Netherland hotel in New York City. One of them caught fire. The demo that was carried live on television did not catch fire.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZYurhbUh_2gC&pg=PA61&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false

1985 – Steve Jobs spent his last day as an employee of Apple after submitting his resignation to the board.

http://gizmodo.com/5639822/25-years-ago-today-steve-jobs-left-apple

1997 – After purchasing NeXT the previous December, bringing Steve Jobs back to the company, the Apple Board named Jobs as interim CEO, replacing Gil Amelio.

http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/16/today-in-history-steve-jobs-returns-to-apple/

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

1947 – The Association for Computing Machinery was founded as the Eastern Association for Computing Machinery, during a meeting at Columbia University in New York. It developed into the world’s largest organization of computer professionals.

http://www.acm.org/about/history

1947 – RCA released the 12AX7 vacuum tube for public sale. The miniature dual triode vacuum tube with high voltage gain became popular with tube amplifier enthusiasts and has been in continuous production since. The tube is also known as the ECC83 in the European Union.
http://www.effectrode.com/signal-tubes/12ax7-tube-cornerstone-guitar-tone/

2008 – Electronics retailer Best Buy acquired the Napster music service for $121 million, preventing the once dominating music-sharing service from going out of business.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/best-buy-bails-out-failing-napster/

2014 – Microsoft announced they would purchase Mojang, makers of the Minecraft universe. Mojang’s founders, Notch, Carl, and Jakob, announced they would leave the company.

https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/

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

1959 – After 33.5 hours of flight, Luna 2 became the first human-made object to strike the moon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/solarsystem/space_missions/luna_2

2000 – Microsoft released Windows ME. The ME stood for Millenium Edition but deserving or not, would eventually become code for a bad or unnecessary OS update.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-245728.html

2001 – The Nintendo GameCube went on sale in Japan. It was the first Nintendo game console that did not use cartridges.

http://cube.gamespy.com/articles/500/500516p1.html

2015 – The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, LIGO, detected gravitational waves of two merging black holes. It was the first direct observation of gravitational waves.
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/scientists-spot-the-gravity-waves-that-flex-the-universe/

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