We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
1904
The first underground New York City Subway line opens. The first line runs between the Brooklyn Bridge and Broadway, from City Hall to West 145th Street.
1920
KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is granted the first public radio broadcast license.
1922
The Audion, one of the first systems for synchronizing film with an audio recording, is demonstrated by Western Electric’s Bell Laboratories to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Yale University’s Woolsey Hall. The system requires a projectionist to hand-crank the film in time with the audio disk.
1927
The first newsreel to feature sound debuts.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
It is inherent in the mentality of extramuros bulshytt-talkers that they are more prone than anyone else to taking offense (or pretending to) when their bulshytt is pointed out to them. … One is forced either to use this “offensive” word and be deemed a disagreeable person and as such excluded from polite discourse, or to say the same thing in a different way, which means becoming a purveyor of bulshytt oneself…. The latter quality probably explains the uncanny stability and resiliency of bulshytt.
1861
The Pony Express, which has been the fast method of communicating between San Francisco, California and St. Joseph, Missouri officially ceases operations.
1936
The first electric generator at the Hoover Dam goes into full operation.
1960
Saga, a silent shoot-em-up Western play written by the TX-0 computer, the first general purpose transistorized computer, airs on the CBS television network to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The program the wrote Saga is comprised 4,096 words of magnetic core storage. The thirteen thousand lines of code choreographed the movements of each object. A line of direction was written for each action, even if it went wrong. This led to the high point of the show where the sheriff put his gun in the holster of the robber resulting in a never ending loop.
1961
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces Hypertape for the IBM 7340, a system faster than any commercially-available magnetic tape system.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
1671
Giovanni Cassini discovers Iapetus, a moon of Saturn.
1858
The signals carried between Europe and the US over the new transatlantic telegraph cable die altogether as the cable fails. This, the first intercontinental connection, won’t be replaced until 1866.
1945
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) equips its its studios in Radio City, New York with orthicon television cameras, the first cameras to use camera tubes more sensitive to light than film. It marks the beginning of electronic photography.
1955
The first domestic microwave oven is introduced by the Tappan Company in Mansfield, Ohio. Price: US$1,200
Read the rest of this entry » » »
Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is. And when you presume there’s just one right way to do things, of course the instructions begin and end exclusively with the rotisserie. But if you have to choose among an infinite number of ways to put it together then the relation of the machine to you, and the relation of the machine and you to the rest of the world, has to be considered, because the selection from among many choices, the art of the work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine. That’s why you need the peace of mind.
1851
British astronomer William Lassell discovers Ariel and Umbriel, satellites of Uranus. Both satellites names are featured in Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock. Ariel has a diameter of approximately 1,160 km, an orbital period of 2.52 days, and an orbital radius of 191,240 km from Uranus. Umbriel has a diameter of 1,170 km, an orbital period of about four days, and an orbit radius of 266,000 km.
1861
Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line across the United States, bringing an abrupt end for the legendary Pony Express, established just eighteen months earlier, which will close just two days later. The connection is inaugurated with the first transcontinental telegraph message, sent by Justice Stephen J. Field of California to President Abraham Lincoln. The final connection between the east coast and the west coast is made at Salt Lake City, Utah.
1911
During one of twenty test flights, Orville Wright remains in the air nine minutes and forty-five seconds in a glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina setting a new world record that will stand for another ten years.
1926
Harry Houdini gives his last performance at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. He will die on October 31st.
Read the rest of this entry » » »
Colors burst in wild explosions
Fiery, flaming shades of fall
All in accord with my pounding heart
Behold the autumn-weaver
In bronze and yellow dying
Colors unfold into dreams
In hordes of a thousand and one
The bleeding
Unwearing their masks to the last notes of summer
Their flutes and horns in nightly swarming
Colors burst within
Spare me those unending fires
Bestowed upon the flaming shades of fall
508
CSS
XHTML
Website Credits &
Disclaimers