1631
Pierre Gassendi first observes the transit of a planet. Johannes Kepler had predicted a transit of Mercury would occur in 1631. When Gassendi observed the dot of Mercury passing across the face of the Sun with a Galilean telescope by projecting the sun’s image on a screen of paper. He will recount the observation in Mercurius in sole visus (”Mercury in the Face of the Sun”) in 1632.

1903
Léon Gaumont screens his first sound film for the Société de Photographie in Paris, France.

1908
Professor Ernest Rutherford announces in London that he had isolated a single atom of matter.

1911
Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, in his presidential address to the Röntgen Society in London, suggests that high-definition television is possible with cathode ray tubes. The paper won’t be published until April 1924 in the magazine Wireless World.

1918
Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard demonstrates a tube-launched solid propellant rocket, using a music stand as his launching platform. Goddard began work for the Army in 1917 to design rockets to aid in the war effort. Further development led to the World War II bazooka, a small, hand-held rocket launcher.

1932
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century premieres on the radio. The show is based on two novellas published in Amazing Stories by Philip Francis Nowlan and a subsequent comic strip. Many will later cite Buck Rogers series as the great-grandfather of many later science fiction series, such as Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek.

1935
Royal National Institute for the Blind issues the first “talking book,” using twelve inch discs.

1946
The first US coin-operated television is publicly exhibited in New York City. It operates when a quarter is inserted, playing various test patterns and a model of Felix the Cat. The receiver, named the Tradio-Vision, contains twenty tubes and a five inch cathode ray tube that reflected a 500-line image on mirror in the lid of its metal cabinet.

1955
A feature-length film premieres on television before opening in US theaters for the first time.

1960
At the Rand Corporation, the JOSS conversational timesharing service is first implemented on the Johnniac computer. Mathematician and systems programmer Cliff Shaw developed the Johnniac Open Shop System (JOSS) in a symbolic assembly language called EasyFox, which he had also developed. The system’s purpose is to bring users back into contact with the machine to do online debugging and program development. Prior to timesharing, batch turn-around times impeded the solution of many problems as programmers submitted punch cards to computer operators and waited for their results for as long as several days.

1966
The game show Concentration converts to broadcasting episodes in color, making NBC the first television network with a schedule completely composed of color programming.

1972
Rolling Stone magazine publishes an article by Stewart Brand,the author of The Whole Earth Catalog, entitled “Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums.” The article begins, “Ready or not computers are coming to the people.”

1985
The internet domain Northrop.com is registered. It is the sixth internet domain ever to be registered.

1986
Atari makes an initial public offering. Four and a half million shares are initially sold for US$11.25 each, raising US$50.6 million. Atari pays its debts to Warner Communications and other loans of US$36.2 million with the proceeds.
Read more about Atari at the Atari Museum.

1988
USA Today publishes an article on the Morris Worm as its headline story. The article describes the worm as the “worst computer virus outbreak in history”, with over 6,000 computers being affected on something called INTERnet (”a low-security computer network… which is designed to let researchers across the USA easily exchange messages by computer.”)

1990
Z-Nix sues Microsoft for allegedly violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by exerting monopolistic control of operating system user interfaces to control the mouse pointer market. Z-Mix asks for US$4.5 million in damages.

1994
Apple Computer, International Business Machines (IBM), and Motorola announce that they will create a computer platform to run all major operating systems, except the Intel x86-based Microsoft Windows 3.1 and its successors. The Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP, pronounced “chirp”) is designed to create a common standard for future computers and to make ports of both operating systems and application software easier. Apple Computer will port the Mac OS to this platform and license other vendors to create Mac-compatible computers. IBM will port AIX and OS/2, Motorola will port Windows NT, Novell will port NetWare, SunSoft will port Solaris.

The Electrical Engineering Times runs a cover story about flaws in Intel’s Pentium computer chip. The bug, an obscure flaw that causes extremely rare computation errors when performing certain types of mathematical calculations will eventually cause Intel to replace any Pentium processor affected by the flaw. Intel will take a US$475 million charge against earnings for the quarter to cover the expense of replacing all of the chips.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student radio station WXYC launches the world’s first internet radio broadcast. Visit the station’s official website.

1862
A direct telegraphic link between New York and San Francisco is established.

1935
Edwin Armstrong presents his paper “A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation,” in which he first proposes FM radio to the New York chapter of the Institute of Radio Engineers,

1944
The Hanford Atomic Facility first produces plutonium. The facility will eventually produce the plutonium used in construction of Fat Man, the atomic bomb that will be detonated over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945.

1955
A movie premieres on television in a coast-to-coast broadcast for the first time.

1957
The Hewlett-Packard Company, Inc. (HP) offers public stock for the first time. Visit the company’s official website.

1962
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) releases the IBM 1230 optical mark scoring reader, capable of reading and scoring 1,200 test answer sheets an hour of unattended operation.

1971
The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) tests the largest US underground hydrogen bomb, on Amchitka Island, one of the Aleutian Islands. Code-name: Cannikin

1980
International Business Machines (IBM) and Microsoft sign a formal contract under which Microsoft will develop an alternative to Digital Research’s CP/M operating system along with a simple scripting language for IBM’s upcoming PC line of computers. Microsoft will receive US$200,000 to adapt 86-DOS into MS-DOS for the IBM PC and US$500,000 for BASIC and its compiler. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft will retain control over DOS (Disk Operating System), a stipulation that will eventually make Microsoft the leading software developer in the world. Initial versions of the software will be delivered in mid-January.

1986
Maurice Wilkes writes to Niklaus Wirth proposing that the Modula-2+ language be revised. Wirth will give the project his blessing, and the Modula-3 committee will be established.

1987
The science fiction film Steel Dawn, directed by Lance Hool and starring Patrick Swayze, Lisa Niemi, Anthony Zerbe, and Brion James, to 290 US theaters. In it, a warrior wandering through a a post-apocalyptic world comes upon a group of settlers who are being menaced by a murderous who want the water their control. The film will gross US$311,892 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 42 mins

1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Enemy” first airs. (No. 307) In it, Geordi is trapped on a harsh planet with a hostile Romulan, and the pair are forced to work together to survive. Memory Alpha entry

1993
ViaCrypt publishes ViaCrypt PGP 2.4, a commercial version of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) application.

1994
The science fiction television series Earth 2 premieres on the NBC television network with the episode “First Contact, Part 1″. In the episode, a group of humans leave the space stations in Earth orbit to travel to a planet twenty-two light years away named “G889″ in hopes of making a better life for sick children afflicted with an illness known only as “the syndrome.” The series follows an advance team that attempts to prepare a new colony for the remaining families that are scheduled to arrive twenty-six months later after their craft crash-lands. The series will run for one season of twenty-two episodes, until June 4, 1995. TV.com entry

1852
The first US national civil engineering society, the American Society of Civil Engineers and Architects, is founded. Twelve engineers attend the event at which the society was founded, though an invitation had been extended to all civil engineers in New York. The purpose of the society is “the advancement of the sciences of engineering and architecture in their several branches, the professional improvement of its members, the encouragement of intercourse between men of practical science, and the establishment of a central point of reference and union for its members.” The organization’s architects will later split off into their own organization, and the organization will be retitled the “American Society of Civil Engineers” (ASCE). Visit the official ASCE website.

1895
George B. Selden of Rochester, New York, receives the first US patent for a gasoline-driven automobile. (US No. 549,160) In the patent, he describes the complete automobile incorporating such a clutch, a compressed air self-starter, and a steering system. As a patent attorney, he knows to delay the contention over the patent by sending amendments and other communications every two years. Meanwhile, others develop the actual working of the automobile, increasing the value of his patents, and making him one of the earliest successful “patent trolls.”

1906
Marie Curie becomes the first females lecturer at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France. In her inaugural lecture, Curie explains her treatise on radioactivity. One hundred twenty students attend the lecture, along with several members of the public and the media.

1922
Archaeologist Howard Carter excavates a further eleven steps and exposes a large portion of the plastered and sealed entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The first step had been discovered by a laborer the day before. Carter cables his financier, Lord Carnarvon, in England with the following message, “At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley a magnificent tomb with seals intact recovered same for your arrival congratulations.” The tomb entrance is refilled, to be uncovered fully November 23 – 24, 1922, after the arrival of Lord Carnarvon.

1930
A demonstration of the Baird closed circuit television system at the Hairdressing Fair of Fashion, held November 5 – 13, includes the first advertisement, a short promotion of the Eugène Method of permanent hair waving.

1940
American election returns are broadcast on television for the first time.

1943
Universal Pictures releases the horror film Son of Dracula, directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Robert Paige, Louise Allbritton, and Evelyn Ankers to US theaters. It is the third in Universal Studios’ Dracula trilogy, preceded by Dracula and Dracula’s Daughter. IMDB listing

1963
Archaeologists find Viking ruins at L’Anse-aux-Meadows in Newfoundland that predate Columbus‘ landing by five hundred years. The discovery supports the belief of many historians that Leif Ericson, second son of Eric the Red, was the first European to reach the North American mainland, at a place that he called Vinland.

1967
NASA launches the ATS-3 communications satellite. It will remain in service longer than any other satellite in history, remaining active for over twenty-eight years. It will return the first photographs of the the full Earth disk.

1970
The Data Processing Division (DPD) of International Business Machines (IBM) releases three new products: the IBM 303 control unit, the IBM 3420 tape drive, and the IBM 129 card data recorder with monolithic-circuit memory.

1974
Atari releases the duck hunting game Qwak! to arcades. The game is notable for being among the first games to feature a single-player mode with enemies with basic artificial intelligence (AI). The game marks the beginning of the trend of increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence in video games. Earlier single-player games, such as Gotcha, Pong, and Spacewar! used discrete logic, rather than AI.

Kee Games, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Atari, releases the Tank! arcade game in North America. Tank is the first game to use IC-based ROM to store graphical data. Although Gran Trak 10, released in July of 1974, was the first arcade game to use ROM data, Gran-Trak’s ROM uses an earlier diode-based ROM technology. The game will become so popular that Atari makes its “secret” ownership of Key Games public knowledge, merging the company back into Atari and later releasing Tank under the Atari label as well.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Mike Lepkosky scores a record-setting 8,161,270 points playing the Midway arcade game Pac-Man at the Fantasy Freeway arcade in Houston, Texas. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1988
In the US, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) is signed into law by US President Ronald Reagan. The law prohibits the “wrongful disclosure of video tape rental or sale records” outside the ordinary course of business. The act was passed after the video rental history of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork was nationally publicized. Violators of the law may be held liable for up to US$2,500 in actual damages. Read more about the VPPA at Epic.org.

1989
FO-12, the first Japanese amateur satellite developed by the Japan Amateur Radio League and the NEC Corporation is taken out of service due to a battery failure.

1990
PC Week publishes a forceful letter from Brad Silverberg, Vice President of Systems Software at Microsoft and General Manager of its Windows and MS-DOS Business Unit, which denies that Microsoft has ever engaged in fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) tactics or that Microsoft has stolen features from the DR-DOS operating system, claiming that, “The feature enhancements of MS-DOS version 5.0 were decided and development was begun long before we heard about DR DOS 5.0.”

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Reunion” first airs. (No. 407) In it, Picard is selected to arbitrate the selection of a new Chancellor for the Klingon Empire and, in doing so, find out who dishonorably murdered the old Chancellor. Also involved is Ambassador K’Ehleyr, who has a surprise for Worf, their son. Memory Alpha entry

United States President George H. W. Bush signs the Launch Services Purchase Act into law. The Act, in a reversal of the Space Shuttle monopoly, orders NASA to purchase launch services for its primary payloads from commercial providers whenever such services are required in the course of its activities.

1991
Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, California and Mayor Xavier Suarez of Miami, Florida officially declare the day “Nintendo Fun Day.”

Version 1.10 of RemoteAccess, an early MS-DOS Bulletin Board System (BBS) program is released. Download the application at PC Micro.

1922
The entrance to the tomb of King Tutankhamen is discovered in the Valley of the Kings where archaeologist Howard Carter had been making extended excavations. One of Carter’s laborers stumbled upon a stone step, the first step in a sunken stairway that ran down into the rock. Carter will open the tomb of the largely unknown child-king later in the month. In 1907, Lord Carnarvon, a wealthy English aristocrat with a passion for archeology, hired Carter and financed his excavations.

1939
The first air conditioned automobile, a Packard, is exhibited in Chicago, Illinois. The Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan has been known for producing luxury automobiles since 1899.

1943
The X-10 nuclear reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory goes “critical” with a self-sustaining fission reaction, becoming the world’s second reactor to achieve such a reaction. The reactor took just nine urgent months to build. Over the next year, the reactor performed flawlessly, irradiating thousands of fuel slugs, which were disassembled and dissolved so the plutonium could be extracted, bit by precious bit. It is an experimental reactor far larger and more advanced than Fermi’s Chicago pile.

1946
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) demonstrates all-electronic color television using three picture tubes.

1952
On election night, CBS News uses a UNIVersal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC I) computer to predict the outcome of the 1952 presidential election after analyzing only five percent of the tallied votes. In the race between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, the computer projects a victory for Eisenhower, but journalists Charles Collingwood and Walter Cronkite find the result so dubious in the face of opinion polls that have consistently predicted a landslide victory for Stevenson that they postpone announcing the UNIVAC results until it’s clear to everyone that Eisenhower will win. News of the prediction will vault the UNIVAC to national fame.

The United States government establishes the National Security Agency to collect and analyze foreign communications. Read more about the organization’s history. Visit the organization’s official website.

1929
The Marconi-Wright facsimile system, a system that uses super high-speed Morse telegraphy, is first demonstrated. With it, documents and images can be transmitted across the Atlantic in just three minutes. The earliest users of the system will be newspapers.

1937
Howard H. Aiken of Harvard University corresponds with J.W. Bryce of International Business Machines (IBM) to suggest constructing an automatic calculating machine for use in computing physical problems. This exchange will eventually inspire the creation of The Harvard Mark I, the first large-scale automatic digital computer in the US.

1953
The first live coast-to-coast color television telecast in the US is made by Radio Corporation of America (RCA).

1954
The first Godzilla film is released in Japan.

1956
The Wizard of Oz airs on television for the first time, with an audience of approximately forty-five million people.

1957
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2, the first spacecraft to ever carry a living creature into space. On board is the first animal to enter orbit, a Siberian husky named Laika. The satellite will return biological data, the first of its kind, to Earth showing how Laika adapts to space. The satellite is the size of a small car, weighs approximately one thousand pounds, and will remain in orbit 162 days.

1962
The New York Times publishes an article that features one of the earliest uses of the term “personal computer”. The article is a report on a recent meeting of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers at which John W. Mauchly spoke to the assembly about his vision of the future of computing. Mauchly is quoted in the article as stating that, “There is no reason to suppose the average boy or girl cannot be master of a personal computer.” The term will be popularized six years later when Hewlett Packard begins referring to its Hewlett Packard 9100A as a personal computer in advertising.

1966
The Star Trek episode “Dagger of the Mind” first airs. (No. 9) In it, the Enterprise visits a prison planet where a new treatment for the criminally insane has deadly results. Memory Alpha entry

1967
The Star Trek episode “I, Mudd” first airs. (No. 37) In it, Captain Kirk and the crew has a second run in with the con man, Harry Mudd, this time finding him as the king of a planet with an army of androids. Memory Alpha entry

1971
The first edition of the UNIX Programmer’s Manual by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson is published. It includes over sixty commands.

The UNIX Time-Sharing System First Edition (VI) is released.

1973
NASA launches Mariner 10 toward Mercury, where, on March 29, 1974, it will become the first space probe to reach the planet.

The Star Trek: The Animated Series episode “Once Upon a Planet” first airs. (No. 09) In it, the crew of the Enterprise revisits the “amusement park” planet first seen in the Classic Trek episode “Shore Leave” hoping for some rest and relaxation, but they discover that the planet’s Keeper is dead. When the untended machinery begins constructing dangerous images from the crew members’ thoughts, Lieutenant Uhura is captured by the planet’s master computer, who resents being made to serve humans. Memory Alpha entry

1983
According to Fred Cohen’s later 1984 paper Computer Viruses – Theory and Experiments, the first virus in history is conceived on this date as an academic experiment to be presented at an upcoming computer security seminar. Len Adleman created the script in eight hours of work on a VAX 11/750 Unix system, and he dubs his creation a “virus.” Adleman performs a battery of five tests on the virus before successfully demonstrating it at the security seminar on November 10. Read Computer Viruses – Theory and Experiments online.

1986
The information technology magazine Computerworld publishes its one thousandth issue. Visit the magazine’s official website.

1988
The existence of the Morris Worm, one of the first computer worms to spread through the internet, becomes public knowledge the day following its release. The first mention of the worm is posted to Usenet, and the New York Times learns that the author of the worm is Cornell University graduate student Robert T. Morris, Jr. after an anonymous caller accidentally lets slip the authors initials (rtm) and login. Bob Morris, Chief National Computer Security Center Scientist with the National Security Agency (NSA), calls the Times and confirms that the author is his son. The worm was originally created by Morris as part of a legitimate research project in an attempt to count the number of computers actively connected to the internet around the globe. However, due to a programming error, the day will become known as Black Thursday as administrators around the country discover that their computers are hampered by hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of shell processes that appear faster than they can be deactivated. Rebooting systems does little to help, and, around the nation, networks fail as six thousand computers, about on tenth of all connections to the internet, crash.

The first World of Commodore trade show in the US is held, over four days in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1931
The DuPont Company, of Wilmington, Delaware, announces the first practical synthetic rubber, DuPrene, which will later be renamed Neoprene. The new rubber is expensive to produce, but it resists oil and gasoline, which natural rubber doesn’t.

1936
The British Broadcasting Corporation begins transmitting the world’s first regularly scheduled high-definition (200 lines) television service, the BBC Television Service, from Alexandra Palace, in north London. The service will later be renamed BBC1 in 1964. Its range is about thirty-five miles. Regular programs are broadcast twice a day, from 3 – 4pm, and from 9 – 10pm, Monday through Saturday.

1947
In California, Howard Hughes conducts the first and only flight of the Spruce Goose, the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built, over Long Beach Harbor in California. The Spruce Goose, which was formally named Hercules, is the first US plane with eight engines; it boasts a wing span of 319 feet, 11 inches; it weighs over two hundred tons; and it cost twenty-five million dollars to build. It’s named the “Spruce Goose” because its entire airframe and surface is composed entirely of laminated birch wood rather than the aluminum typically used in airplane design, due to wartime restrictions. Its flight lasts about a minute, and it only achieves an altitude of seventy feet.

1957
The first titanium mill is opened in Toronto, Ohio by the Titanium Metals Corp. of America (TIMET). The mill is the first in the US to roll and forge titanium. (This marks the beginning of the eventual creation of the Terminator.)

1960
Penguin Books is found not guilty of charges of obscenity for publishing the book Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

1962
The Data Processing Division (DPD) of International Business Machines (IBM) introduces the IBM 7010 data processing system, which combines the power of IBM’s large-scale 7000-series with the data handling capabilities of the company’s widely used IBM 1400 series.

The McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, the largest solar telescope ever designed, is dedicated in Kitt Peak, Arizona. The telescope captures images of the Sun using a mirror eighty inches in diameter (2m). At the dedication ceremony, a letter sent from President Kennedy, extolling the virtues of the facility is read. Visit the official McMath-Pierce website.

1976
Kee Games, a wholly owned subsidiary of Atari, releases the racing game Sprint 2 to arcades in North America. Sprint 2 is evolutionary descendant of Gran Trak 10 and Gran Trak 20, but it features the notable addition of a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, a first for racing games. The upgrade in processing power allows Sprint 2 to include two computer-controlled cars, improved graphics, and a larger selection of tracks.

1977
The identification of methanogens, a form of life dating back some 3.5 billion years, is first reported by scientists at the University of Illinois. Microbiologist Carl R. Woese discovered the organisms are so different from bacteria that they deserved their own branch of the family tree as the third domain of life, Archaea. Methanogens are found in oxygen-deficient environments, and mostly obtain their energy by reducing carbon dioxide and oxidizing hydrogen, with the production of methane.

1987
The Fall Comdex computer expo is held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Over 100,000 people attend the week-long show.

1988
Robert T. Morris, Jr., a computer science graduate student at Cornell University and son of a chief scientist at a division of the National Security Agency (NSA), launches a self-replicating worm on the government’s ARPANET as part of a research project meant to determine the size of the internet by infecting UNIX systems in order to count the number of connections that existed. Because of the of a programming error, the worm, which will be known initially as the “Internet Worm” and later as the “Morris Worm,” will began infecting machines repeatedly, causing clogged networks and system crashes. Eventually, the worm will spread to some six thousand networked computers (roughly ten percent of internet users), clogging government and university systems for two days. Specifically, it will effect DEC VAX systems and Sun-3 machines running BSD UNIX with an internet connection. It will become the first worm to spread extensively “in the wild,” the first worm to receive extensive media coverage, and one of the first programs to exploit a buffer overrun vulnerability. The worm will strike the Pentagon, SDI research labs, and six major universities. According to later reports from the the United States General Accounting Office, the attack will cause between one hundred thousand and ten million dollars in damages, all told. Morris will be dismissed from Cornell, sentenced to three years probation and fined US$10,000 for releasing the worm, and the incident will mark a significant turning point in the evolution of the internet. By crippling the small, elite community, Morris will expose the unexamined vulnerability of the network and plant the seeds of worry that will ultimately give rise to modern computer security.

1879
Thomas Edison patents the electric lamp.

1884
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is adopted universally at a meeting of the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC. The International Date Line is then drawn up and the twenty-four time zones are created.

1887
Eleven years after the phone was invented, the first differentiation between day and night long distance rates goes into effect, with night rates in most, but not all, instances lower than day rates.

1929
Thomas A Edison Inc. discontinues production of phonographs and records in order to concentrate on manufacturing the more popular dictating machines and radio receivers.

1939
The first rabbit conceived by artificial insemination is exhibited in the US at the 12th Annual Graduate Fortnight at the New York Academy of Medicine. Dr. Gregory Pincus, an American biologist, removed an egg from the ovary of a female rabbit and fertilized it with a salt solution. The egg was then transferred to the uterus of a second rabbit, which functioned as an incubator. Dr. Pincus, of Clark University conducted his experiments at Harvard University.

1951
The British computer LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office I), built by J. Lyons and Co., first goes into operation. The computer, which is an adaptation of EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator ), will be used by the company to run routine business applications.

1952
The United States successfully detonates the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Mike,” in the Eniwetok Atoll of the Marshall Islands, three thousand miles west of Hawaii. The bomb has a yield of ten megatons, a force a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and when it explodes, it results in a fireball more than three miles across, completely obliterating Elugelab and leaving an underwater crater 6,240 feet wide and 164 feet deep where an island had once been. Eighty million tons of soil were kicked into the air by the blast. The “mushroom” cloud rose to 135,000 feet and will eventually spread to 1,000 miles in width. It is the first time fusion occurs on Earth.

1954
The Industrial Development Engineering Associates (IDEA) Corporation begins selling the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency (TR-1). The radio was designed and built by Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI). The radio uses a 22 ½ volt battery which outlives the two “B” or ten “A” batteries which are used in conventional vacuum tube portables. The first transistor radio produced is presented to Patrick Eugene Haggerty, vice president of TI, along with a certificate acknowledging him for his “vision, judgment and untiring efforts.” Price: US$49.95

1956
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley are awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for inventing the transistor.

1960
The first market trial of Touch Tone calling by AT&T, begins in Findlay, Ohio.

1962
The Soviet space probe Mars 1, which will later make the first successful flyby of Mars, is launched.

1968
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system goes into effect with the G (general), M (mature), R (restricted, no unaccompanied children) and X (over 16 only) ratings. The system was introduced October 7, and the PG-13 and NC-17 will be introduced later.

1969
The third Interface Message Processor (IMP) node is installed at the University of California at Santa Barbara, establishing a third ARPANET node. The fourth node will be established at the University of Utah in December, and by 1971, fifteen nodes will be linked in total. Read more at UCLA.

1976
Paul Allen resigns from Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) to join Microsoft full time.

1977
Chiron, the farthest known asteroid is discovered by Charles T. Kowal. It will later be reclassified as a centaur, a type of planetoid.

1978
Microsoft establishes its first international sales office in Japan. Microsoft appoints ASCII Microsoft in Tokyo, which will later be known as Microsoft Japan, as its exclusive sales agent for the Far East. Kazuhiko Nishi, founder and publisher of Japan’s popular ASCII magazine, is appointed to organize the new operation.

1979
The Data Processing Division (DPD) of International Business Machines (IBM) announces two new models of the IBM 3033 processor, the Group N processors.

1981
November 1 is the last day of the first Atari Coin-Op US$50,000 World Championships held at the Chicago Expo Center. The event, managed by Tournament Games, Inc., has been a dismal failure. Somewhere between ten thousand and fifteen thousand coin-op players had been anticipated, but only 250 players actually participated. Eric Ginner won a US$12,000 cash prize for his US$60 entry fee and Ok-Soo Han won US$4,000 in cash and prizes. Among the contestants is actor Matthew Laborteaux who plays Albert on the television series Little House on the Prairie.

Happy Halloween!

1912
The Musketeers of Pig Alley, directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Elmer Booth, Lillian Gish, Clara T. Bracy, and Walter Miller, debuts in the US. It is the first gangster film. IMDB listing

1926
Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that developed after his appendix ruptured. The time of his death, on Halloween, will give rise to myths and legend that will cement Houdini’s place

1956
An LC-47 transport plane lands at the South Pole for the first time. When Navy Admiral George J. Dufek steps off the Que Sera Sera, he becomes the first American to set foot there. He and an advance party arrive to build the first permanent South Pole Station.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Kenneth Vance, age 18, scores a record-setting 411,200 points playing the Atari video game Kangaroo for two hours and twenty-seven minutes at Tilt Arcade in Las Vegas, Nevada. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

Coleco Industries announces that it has sold over 2.2 million table-top video-game machines to date.

1983
Texas Instruments (TI) cancels the US$50 rebate program for the TI-99/4A home computer, but it extends the offer to give a free Speech Synthesizer to qualified purchases of six program modules through Tuesday, January 31, 1984.

1988
At the Marriott Marquis hotel in New York, International Business Machines (IBM) officially announces the release of OS/2 1.1 Standard Edition with Presentation Manager. Code-name: Trimaran

1989
The internet service provider (ISP) Prodigy announces that it has 100,000 subscribers in households in eight major metro areas. Visit Prodigy’s official website.

1992
The Vatican formally admits its error in condemning Galileo Galilei for heresy for over 359 years for his geocentric view of the solar system. After thirteen years of inquiry, the Pope’s commission of historic, scientific, and theological scholars brought the pope a “not guilty” finding for Galileo. Pope John Paul II himself met with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to help set the record straight.

1993
Pagan Publishing announces a new Cthulhu role-playing game (RPG) called End Time in a press release. End Time is Pagan Publishing’s first role-playing game. It is set in the year 2094, after the stars have come right and Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones have arisen and laid waste to humanity. It serves as a sequel to the award-winning Call of Cthulhu RPG published by Chaosium, Inc..

1994
Quantum Link (Q-Link), an online service for e-mail, games, news, and shopping on Commodore 64 and 128 computers, announces that it will withdraw from the Commodore market. Past subscribers are offered memberships on the new America Online (AOL) service.

1996
Eidos Interactive releases the third-person shooter Tomb Raider for the Saturn in the US. The game introduces numerous innovations within 3D third-person adventure games and will remain extremely influential for years to come. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)

1997
Alternic founder Eugene Kashpureff is arrested in Toronto, Canada on wirefraud charges brought by the US for hijacking the URL of the InterNIC registry website and redirecting its traffic to his own Alternic website July 11 – 14, 1997 to protest Network Solutions’ monopoly on the domain name system. Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI), which runs the InterNIC, took Kashpureff to court in August, but the case was settled. Kashpureff apologized to the Internet community and tried to help inform it how to prevent someone else from perpetrating the same kind of domain name hijacking. NSI turned the case over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), dissatisfied with the outcome of its civil suit. The news of Kashpureff’s arrest shocks many. Richard Sexton, who worked with Kashpureff on the AlterNIC but disagreed with the actions he took, will later release a statement in which he says, “The most you could have lost is two seconds and one mouse-click. It is fraud, but the fiscal damage amounts to zero. He should be found guilty and fined a dollar.” Many will later characterize the protest as an act of civil disobedience. Visit the Wayback Machine archive of AlterNIC.net. Visit Eugene Kashpureff’s personal website.

GT Interactive releases the first-person shooter (FPS) Duke Nukem 64 for the Nintendo 64 in the US. ESRB: M (Mature)

1998
The first public version of Sketch, version 0.5.0, is released. Sketch is a free vector graphics editor written almost completely in Python and released under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The application will later be renamed Skencil. Visit the application’s official website.

The Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998 (H.R. 4151) is signed into law in the US. The bill makes identity theft a federal crime, with penalties of up to three years imprisonment and a maximum fine of US$250,000. It also directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to help victims deal with the consequences of identity theft.

The Tech Museum of Innovation in downtown San Jose, California opens. Visit the official website of The Tech.

1999
Sega announces that 750,862 Dreamcast video game consoles have been sold in North America to date.

2000
Napster announces a partnership with German recording company Bertelsmann AG (BMG) under which the companies will develop a membership-based distribution system that guarantees payment to artists. In exchange for a stake in the business, Bertelsmann drops its lawsuit against Napster.

Russia launches the Soyuz TM-31, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station (ISS). Following the mission, the ISS will be continuously crewed.

2001
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “The Andorian Incident” first airs. (No. 107) In it, Archer, Trip, and T’Pol are taken hostage by Andorians in the Vulcan monastery of P’Jem. Memory Alpha entry

2002
Opera Software releases version 6.1 of the Opera web browser for FreeBSD. It is the first version to be released for FreeBSD.

2003
A bankruptcy court approves reorganization plans for telecommunication’s giant MCI, essentially removing the company from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MCI’s bankruptcy was the largest in US history.

The US Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) releases a summary of a draft report concluding that cloned farm animals and their offspring pose little danger to the national food supply. News of the report leads scientists and media outlets to predict that products derived from clones could one day be sold in grocery stores. While no federal rules currently prohibit the sale of such products, food producers are currently observing a voluntary moratorium on cloned animals. Since clones can still cost as much as US$20,000 a piece, however, they are unlikely to be be used as food anytime in the near future.

2004
Apple Computer releases its Mac OS X 10.4.3 operating system for the Macintosh. The update include an updated version of Safari.

2005
Apple Computer announces that it has sold one million videos through its iTunes Store in the nineteen days since it began offering videos October 12th. iTunes offers approximately two thousand videos, including animation, music videos, and popular network programing for US$1.99 per video. Steve Jobs comments that, “Selling one million videos in less than twenty days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads,” in the statement announcing the milestone. “Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods.” Visit the official iTunes website.

2006
Version 3.0.8 (”Feynman”) of the Scientific Linux operating system is released. Visit the system’s official website.

2008
Jason Scott Sadofsky marks the tenth anniversary of Textfiles.com, a website devoted to archiving and documenting the history of the bulletin board system (BBS) communities that were the forerunners of the modern internet. The site has cataloged roughly sixty thousand text files documenting the era of the BBS, and each month, the site boasts approximately one hundred fifty thousand unique visitors. To commemorate the anniversary, Sadofsky has created a sub-site called the Ten Years of Textfiles, on which he recounts his experiences as the website’s administrator. Visit the official Textfiles website.

The OpenBSD Project releases version 4.4 of the OpenBSD operating system.

Sun Microsystems releases version 10/08 of the Solaris operating system.