1936 – Edwin Armstrong presented FM radio at FCC headquarters. Armstrong played a jazz record over conventional AM radio, then switched to an FM broadcast. “[I]f the audience of 50 engineers had shut their eyes they would have believed the jazz band was in the same room.”
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/FM_broadcasting_in_the_USA.html
1946 – The first mobile telephone call was made from a car in St. Louis, Missouri.
http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/46mobile.html
1997 – Programmers deciphered code written in the impenetrable Data Encryption Standard, the strongest legally exportable encryption software in the United States. The hackers organized over the Internet and cracked the software in five months, proving that stronger encryption was needed.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ce_nUNxdKV8C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=june+17+1997+data+encryption+standard&source=bl&ots=ujMF0OF7CC&sig=Gbddn5qlPT5nih1yDkbbke-LiEQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5ra0UZIHxpuIAqLPgYgO&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=june%2017%201997%20data%20encryption%20standard&f=false
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.
Cool reference. I’m mentioned in that book. My team finished 25th on DESCHALL