1841
The short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, which will later come to be widely considered the first detective story in history, is published in Graham’s Magazine. The story establishes many literary devices and motifs later seen in the mystery genre.

1886
An alternating-current (AC) electrical system is demonstrated by lighting Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts with electricity generated by the power planet of George Westinghouse.

1900
Nikola Tesla receives a patent for the wireless transmission of electric power. (US No. 645,576) View the patent online.

1916
Albert Einstein publishes an academic paper on his Theory of General Relativity entitled “Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitästheorie” in the journal Annalen der Physik. Einstein’s theory accounts for the slow rotation of the elliptical orbit of Mercury, which Newtonian gravitational theory failed to explain.

1934
The first practical radar system is tested by Rudolf Kuhnold, Chief of the German Navy Signals Research Department, in Kiel Harbour, Germany. The systems uses a 700-watt transmitter on a frequency of 600 megacycles. During the test, the system successfully receives echoes off the battleship Hesse, 600 yards away. Read more about the history of the Radar.

1964
The European Space Research Organization (ESRO), the forerunner of the European Space Agency, is established by ten European nations for the purpose of joint scientific research per a June 14, 1962 agreement.

1977
JVC launches its VHS video format with a two-page advertisement in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Contagion” first airs. (No. 211) In it, the Enterprise and a Romulan vessel are infected by a virus that destory another Federation ship. Memory Alpha entry

1994
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Profit and Loss” first airs. (No. 218) In it, Quark’s old flame returns to the station, but he discovers that she no long harbors any feelings for him. Memory Alpha entry

1995
In San Francisco, California, the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) is held over three days. Visit the official WinHEC website.

In Tokyo, Japan twelve people are killed and more than thirteen hundred others sickened when packages containing Sarin gas are released on five separate subway trains by Aum Shinrikyo cult members.

1996
Infogear files for a U.S. trademark “IPhone”, which will be granted in 1999. The trademark covers “computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerized global information networks.” In 1998, Infogear will release a telephone with an integrated web browser under the brand name iPhone. Shortly after Steve Jobs announces the Apple iPhone in June 2007, Cisco will issue a statement explaining that it had been negotiating trademark licensing with Apple. Then, on January 10, 2007, Cisco will announce a lawsuit charging Apple over the infringement of the trademark, seeking an injunction in federal court to prohibit Apple from using the name.

1997
Apple Computer releases the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) to commemorate the company’s twentieth anniversary. The system features a 250MHz PowerPC 603e, a 256KB Level-2 Cache, 32MB – 128MB RAM, 2MB VRAM, a 2GB hard drive, a 1.4MB floppy drive, a 4x CD-ROM drive, an FM radio tuner, and the Mac OS 9.1 operating system. The system is the first Apple desktop to feature a track pad, the first Apple desktop with a flat screen, the first Apple PowerPC desktop to diverge from the beige tower design, and the first Apple to feature a vertical CD drive. Only twelve thousand of the systems will be ever produced. Browse a gallery of photos of the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. Price: US$7,499

1998
Network Associates, Inc. (NAI), which acquired PGP, Inc. in December 1997, announces the sale of a version of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) outside U.S. boarders through both a Dutch and Swiss subsidiary company, after having legally exported the source code behind PGP as a printed document to circumvent laws restricting the export of cryptographic software.

Two teenagers hack T-Online, the online service run by Germany’s national telephone company and steal the details of hundreds of bank accounts. The two sixteen year old hackers brag about their exploits, calling Deutsche Telekom’s security for the online service “absolutely primitive.” Visit the official T-Online website.

1999
Legoland California, the the third Legoland theme park, opens in Carlsbad, California. It’s the first Legoland to be built outside of Europe Visit the official Legoland website.

1800
Alexander von Humoldt and Aimé Bonpland capture the first specimen of Electric eels (Electrophorus electricus) during a five-year expedition through the jungles of South America. Humboldt will later write about his discovery in an article entitled, “Observation on the Electric Eel of the New World” in 1808.

1831
The City Bank of New York becomes the site of the first bank robbery in United States history. Approximately US$245,000 is stolen and only a small portion of the money will ever be recovered.

1915
Percival Lowell captures the first photograph of the planet Pluto from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, but it isn’t initially recognized as a planet.

1921
The silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene, is released to US theaters. It will become the most influential film of the German Expressionist movement, and it will strongly influence many future directors, most notably Tim Burton. The film tells the story of the mysterious Dr. Caligari, a hypnotist, his faithful sleepwalking Cesare, and their connection to a string of murders in the German mountain village of Holstenwall. Read more about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. IMDB listing Running Time: 1 hr 12 min

1949
The first museum devoted exclusively to atomic energy in the U.S., the American Museum of Atomic Energy, opens to the public in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the town in which Uranium-235 for the bombs dropped in Japan during World War II was produced.

1958
Britain’s first planetarium, the London Planetarium, opens in the west wing of the Madame Tussauds wax museum. It is one of the world’s largest, built on the former site of a combination Cinema and Restaurant that had been destroyed by a German bomb in 1940.

1972
John Vincent Atanasoff emerges as the victor of the protracted legal battle over the title of inventor of the electronic digital computer. A judge determines that his work had preceded and contributed to development of the ENIAC machine, whose inventors had previously been credited.

1973
Konami Company, Ltd., a leading developer and publisher of many popular anime series, slot machines, tokusatsu, toys, trading cards, and video games, is established. The company will achieve fame in the early eighties with such classics as Frogger, Scramble, and Super Cobra. Visit the official Konami website.

1981
Two workers die of asphyxiation and three others are injured during a nitrogen purge amidst preparations for a ground test of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

1985
International Business Machines (IBM) announces that it will discontinue the PCjr, after the computer has repeatedly failed to meet sales expectations. In the sixteen months that the PCjr has been on the market, only 240,000 units have been sold, largely due to competition from Apple Computer’s Apple IIc. Read more about the battle between the AppleIIc and the PCjr.

1990
Apple Computer releases the Macintosh IIfx, featuring a 40MHz Motorola 68030, 4MB (expandable to 128MB) RAM, and the System 6.0.5 operating system. Price: US$9,000 – US$12,000

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Sins of the Father” first airs. (No. 317) In it, Worf faces a trial in an attempt to clear his father of charges of treason. Memory Alpha entry

1992
Falcom releases the roleplaying game (RPG) Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes II for the NEC PC-8801.

1993
Midway Amusement Games releases Mortal Kombat Version 5.0 to arcades in the US. Visit the official Mortal Kombat website.

1953
MGM, which has been working on its own wide-screen system, becomes the first studio to adopt CinemaScope. So as to create an industry standard and justify exhibitors’ commitment of investment in equipment, other major studios agree to adopt the Fox system as standard. Warner Bros will join later in the year after the release of The Robe but Paramount prefers to back developments in 3D.

1954
Howard Hughes buys RKO Pictures for US$23,489,478.

1955
The initial trial installation of electronic telephone switching for Morris, Illinois is announced. Recorded announcements of disconnects and changed numbers will be used in some small dial offices.

1965
Voskhod 2 is launched into space carrying Cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Pavel Belyayev aboard. On the second orbit, Leonov leaves the spacecraft for twelve minutes, becoming the first person to walk in space. While outside the craft, he takes motion pictures and practices maneuvering. By the end of the spacewalk, Leonov’s spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space, and upon his return, he discovered that it was too wide to re-enter the capsule. With a bit of quick thinking, he opened a value to allow some of the suit’s air to bleed off without venting all of it, only barely getting back into the capsule in time. Voskhod 2 makes a total of seventeen orbits at an altitude of about 110 miles (177km) above Earth.

1974
Atari Introduces Gran Trak 10. It is the first arcade game to use read-only memory (ROM) to store sprites for each car, the game timer, the race track, and the score. As such, it’s the the first game to have defined characters rather than mathematically manipulated dots. The game’s controls, which include a four-position gear shifter, a steering wheel, and two foot pedals, are also all firsts for arcade games.

1982
Federal District Judge George N. Leighton in Chicago orders Magnavox Home Entertainment Center to take its K.C. Munchkin video game off the market because of its similarity to Atari’s popular Pac-Man game.

1986
The New York Times reports that a seventeen year-old New Jersey student named Phillip Naranjo discerned the launch of the new Soviet space station, Mir, before the Soviet government formally announced it. Naranjo and a group of friends tracked transmissions between space vessels and control centers on Earth, and just before the Russians announced Mir on February 20, the teens picked up the transmission of Cyrillic code.

1987
The discovery of “high-temperature” superconductivity is announced to thousands of scientists at a packed meeting of the American Physical Society in New York City. The phenomenon, discovered in 1911, was first known to occur at only four degrees above absolute zero, when all electrical resistance in a metal disappears. In 1986, researchers discovered a ceramic material that is a superconductor at a temperature of more than thirty degrees above absolute zero. When published in September of that year, that news stirred the wider scientific community into action. By the time the APS meeting convened, further discoveries had been made. The scene of excitement at the meeting will later be dubbed the “Woodstock of Physics.” Visit the official American Physical Society website.

1991
In San Francisco, California, the Software Publisher’s Association holds its Spring Symposium, including the Excellence in Software Awards ceremony. Winners include: Lifetime Achievement Award: Steve Wozniak. Best Consumer Program: GeoWorks Ensemble. Best Business Program: Microsoft Windows 3.0.

1995
The SATAN (Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks) security tool is released on the Internet by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema. The release raises a debate about whether security auditing tools should be posted openly for the public to use. Visit the official SATAN website.

1996
Guillermo Gaede pleads guilty in Federal Court on charges of mail fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property. Formerly a software engineer at Intel’s Chandler, Arizona plant, Gaede stole proprietary 486 and Pentium specifications and transferred the data to video tape. He then offered the data to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) who turned the data and Gaede in to authorities.

Texas Instruments (TI) announces a new processor family, the TMS320 Digital Signal Processing (DSP), which doubles recording time in digital telephone answering devices and adds full-duplex speakerphone capabilities.

1998
Ehud Tenebaum, a nineteen year old Israeli, also known by the web handle “The Analyzer”, is arrested in Israel. During heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf, hackers touched off a string of break-ins to unclassified Pentagon computers in order to steal software. Officials suspect Tenebaum of working in concert with American teens to break into Pentagon computers. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre calls it “the most organized and systematic attack” on US military systems to date. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls Tenebaum “damn good … and very dangerous.” The attacks exploited a well-known vulnerability in the Solaris operating system for which a patch had been available for months.

Sony releases the black and white diamond patterned Dual Shock controller for the PlayStation in Japan.

Version 5.5.5 of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) freeware is illegally exported from the US anonymously.

1845
Stephen Perry of the rubber manufacturing company Messers Perry and Co. of London first patents the rubber band. He conceived of the device after experimentally slicing up rubber bottles that had been manufactured by South and Central America natives and brought to England by sailors.

1898
John Philip Holland demonstrates the first practical submarine off Staten Island, New York. The ship remains submerged for one hundred minutes.

1950
Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announces the discovery of radioactive element 98, “Californium.” It was produced by bombarding Curium-242 with Helium-ions.

1958
The United States Navy launches the Vanguard I satellite from Cape Canaveral, following the Soviet Union’s success with their satellites Sputnik I and Sputnik II spacecraft. Vanguard is the fourth artificial satellite to be put into space, and the first launches in the United States. The three pound satellite was developed in just two years, six months, and eight days from scratch.

1975
The Television Electronic Disc (TeD), early videodisc system from Telefunken is commercially launched in West Germany.

1980
The United States Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty concerning whether or not genetically-engineered micro-organisms can be patented. On June 16, the court will rule that the patent office can grant patents on any new and useful composition of matter, irregardless of whether or not the matter is alive. The patent will be issued on March 31, 1981.

1986
Programmer Tim Paterson of Falcon Technology writes to Microsoft“>Microsoft, indicating an intent to sell its royalty-free DOS license. Microsoft replies, indicating a willingness to buy back the license.

1987
Apple Computer declares six different Mac Plus systems the one millionth Mac, one of which is presented to Interface designer Jef Raskin, who started the Macintosh project.

1988
Apple Computer files an eleven page suit against Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard in San Francisco federal district court . Specifically, Apple Computer accuses Microsoft of using visual display features of the highly successful Macintosh operating system graphical user interface (GUI) in the Windows 2.0 operating system. Apple claims that Windows violates thirteen separate copyrights in order to duplicate the “look and feel” of the Macintosh. Hewlett-Packard is also named as a defendant, for copyright violations in its New Wave desktop environment. The suit will be lost in 1995.

1992
Russia launches the Soyuz TM-14 space craft on a mission to the space station Mir. It’s the first Soyuz mission following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

1996
The website of Telia, the major telephone company of Finland and Sweden, is hacked twice. The first time the page is hacked is the first instance of an attack on a Swedish website. The second time the website is hacked, it is defaced, in part, with a message reading, “All rights removed by The Kevin Mitnick Liberation Front in memory of S.H.A!!!” View an archived version of the website the first time it was defaced and the second time it was defaced.

1867
Joseph Lister publishes an article on his discovery of antiseptic surgery in the medical journal The Lancet. The article is the first of a series in which Lister applies Pasteur’s theory that the micro-organisms which cause gangrene might be inhibited chemically. In the articles, he details his successful use of Phenol (carbolic acid) on medical instruments, surgical incisions, and wound dressings to reduce infections.

1919
The wireless telephone is invented, enabling pilots to communicate in flight with each other and the ground for the first time.

1926
Robert Goddard launches the first US liquid-fuel rocket in a field in Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket is an experimental model of Goddard’s own design which places the rocket ahead of its fuel tank, shielded from flame by a metal cone. The design is intended to provide the rocket with greater stability, but it failed to function as it was intended to.

1942
The first V-2 rocket is tested, but it explodes on liftoff. A V-2 will eventually become the first man-made object to make a sub-orbital spaceflight.

1962
The first Titan II rocket is launched. Titan II rockets will later be used as launch vehicles for the Gemini missions.

1966
NASA launches the Gemini 8 at 10:41am EST. Shortly after its launch, it will take part in the first physical docking of two spacecraft in orbit when it rendezvous with the Gemini Agena to conduct extra- vehicular activity six hours and thirty-three minutes after launch. However, about twenty-seven minutes after docking, a malfunction in the capsule’s control thrusters occurs, and it is forced to abort the mission and return to Earth at 10:23pm EST, only 6.5 orbits after launch. The mission is crewed by command pilot Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong and pilot Astronaut David R. Scott. It is the twelfth manned American space mission.

1967
The Star Trek episode “Errand of Mercy” first airs. (No. 26) In it, Kirk and Spock attempt to protect the planet Organia from the Klingons and sway them to the side of the Federation, but the planet’s natives refuse their help. This episode marks the first appearance of the Kligon race in the series. Memory Alpha entry

1975
The NASA robotic space probe Mariner 10 makes its third and final pass of the planet Mercury. Read more about the voyage of the Mariner 10 at NASA’s official site for the mission. View an archive of images returned by the Mariner 10.

1978
The Soviet Soyuz 26 returns to Earth from the first mission to successfully dock with the Salyut 6 space station.

1984
The Russian satellite Ekran 12 is launched. Ekran 12 is a geostationary satellite developed for a national system of Direct-to-Home television. The first satellite of the Ekran series was launched in 1976. Each satellite provides one television and two radio channels to cable systems across the USSR and to individual residences in northern Siberia. Visit the official website of the Ekran satellites.

1915
The English Divisional Court of Appeal rules in the case of Ellis v North Metropolitan Theatres Ltd. that local authorities do not have the right to ban cinema exhibitions on Sundays.

1959
At Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, the first US atomic reactor built specifically for medical research, the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor (BMRR), reaches criticality. The reactor will be decommissioned in December 2000.

1960
The National Observatory at Kitt Peak, Arizona is dedicated. Housing twenty-three telescopes, it is the largest and most diverse gathering of astronomical instruments in the world. Visit the official Kitt Peak National Observatory website.

1963
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 1050 Data Communications System. Visit the official IBM website.

1968
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 1450 bank data processing system specifically designed for small banks. Visit the official IBM website.

1972
The first Unix manual page for cc, the C programming language compiler, is published.

NASA selects a three-part configuration for the design of the Space Shuttle: an expendable external tank for the first stage, partially reusable Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), and the reusable orbiter. Visit the official NASA Shuttle website.

1982
The Videotex Gateway trial is launched in Los Angeles, California by the Times-Mirror. Videotex is one of the first end-user information systems. It will end on December 31.

1983
A Taipei, Taiwan, high court upholds charges brought by Apple Computer charge against Golden Formosa Microcomputer and Sunrise Computer Service of manufacturing and selling pirated copies of patented Apple software products.

International Business Machines (IBM) Japan announces the IBM 5550 Multistation in Japan, featuring an 8MHz Intel 8086 microprocessor, 256KB RAM (expandable to 512KB), up to three 640KB capacity floppy drives, and a 1024×768 graphics monochrome display. Price: US$4,200 – $10,000

1985
Symbolic.com becomes the very first registered internet domain.

1989
Antic Software publishes the first issue of Amiga Plus magazine.

Henk Rogers makes an offer to acquire the rights to develop a console version of Tetris on behalf of Nintendo. While the details of the offer will remain undisclosed, it is high enough that Mirrorsoft will not attempt to match it. Read more about the history of Tetris.

1994
Adobe Systems Inc., developer of leading graphics editing programs, and Aldus Corporation, developer of the PageMaker desktop publishing program, announce that they will merge.

1997
In Seattle, Washington, the GameWorks video arcade opens. The arcade is a joint venture between DreamWorks, Sega Enterprises of Japan, and Universal Studios. The arcade’s main attraction is the Vertical Reality interactive game, which was designed by Steven Spielberg. Up to twelve players are seated around columns of three video screens, and, as opponents are shot, players are elevated. The object of the game is to reach the top.

1998
Apple Computer opens “stores within stores” in all one hundred forty-nine CompUSA chain stores across the country, addressing the long-standing complaints of Mac users over the lack of selection at most local retailers.

Microsoft releases Office 98 (Office 8.0) for Mac OS X. The suite includes Word 98, Excel 5, and PowerPoint 98. Visit the official Office Mac website.

The Stockton Community Wide Web is hacked. Hackers use a Unix command to remove the root files, as well as the core operating system files, but the damage will be partially repaired. Internet Ventures, the company that operates the Stockton Community Wide Web, will later confirm that the ISP’s system was crashed, but it will decline to give further details.

1839
Sir John Herschel uses the word “photography” for the first time in history during a lecture given to the Royal Society in London.

1891
The construction of the first submarine telephone cable across the English Channel is completed.

1915
The first issue of the Sunday Pictorial, the first newspaper to make extensive use of photography, is launched in the UK.

1930
John Logie Baird begins experimental transmissions of his thirty-line television system from a transmitter in Brookmans Park, England.

1931
The first motion picture theater built especially for rear projection films in the US opens in New York City.

1936
Warner Bros. Pictures releases the black-and-white horror film The Walking Dead, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff, Edmund Gwenn, and Marguerite Churchill, to US theaters. In it, a man framed for murder is sentenced to death, but he is later revived by a scientist. It was produced on a budget of US$217,000. IMDB listing

1954
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) begins producing an initial run of five thousand color television receivers at its plant in Bloomington, Indiana. The fifteen inch set, The Merrill (CT-100), will retail for US$1,000.

1955
AT&T Bell Laboratories publicly announces the completion of the first fully transistorized computer, the TRADIC (TRAnisitor DIgital Computer). The computer contains nearly eight hundred transistors, which operate on fewer than 100 watts, about one-twentieth the power required to operate a computer using vacuum tubes.

1956
At the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters convention in Chicago, Illinois, Ampex demonstrates a VRX1000 quadruplex videotape recorder to two hundred CBS network affiliates. Within four days of the demonstration, the network will spend nearly four million dollars to purchase over seventy of the machines, which will later be renamed the Mark IV, for US$50,000 each.

1968
The final episode of Batman starring Adam West and Burt Ward airs on the ABC television network after one hundred twenty episodes but before the completion of its third season. Because the series aired two weekly installments, the series concluded with nearly as many episodes as a series that had run for five years.

1969
The Star Trek episode “All Our Yesterdays” first airs. (No. 78) In it, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are trapped on a planet that will soon be destroyed in a supernova. Though the episode “Turnabout Intruder,” which will air in June, will technically be the last episode produced and aired in the series, according to the stardate dictated at the beginning of this episode, All Our Yesterdays is chronologically the last episode in the series. Memory Alpha entry

1978
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 3624, a second-generation automated teller terminal.

1979
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 3604 Model 7 administrative terminal.

1986
The Giotto space probe, which was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA), passes within 605 kilometers of Halley’s Comet in order to examine the comet’s nucleus. Visit the official website of the Giotto mission.

1988
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Coming of Age” first airs. (No. 119) In it, Wesley takes the Starfleet Academy admission exam while the Enterprise’s crew undergoes a mysterious investigation. Memory Alpha entry

1991
The New England Journal of Medicine reports that pregnant women who use workstations with a Video Display Terminal (VDT) are at no greater risk of miscarriage than women who use monitors that don’t emit electromagnetic fields. Read an abstract of the article at The New England Journal of Medicine website.

1993
Marc Andreessen posts a free version of the Mosaic web browser for Unix-based systems on the NCSA website. On the site, he explains that “NCSA Mosaic provides a consistent and easy-to-use hypermedia-based interface into a wide variety of information sources.” By April, Mosaic will have over ten thousand users.

1882
The zoopraxiscope, an optical apparatus invented by Eadweard J. Muybridge to exhibit photographs of moving animals, is demonstrated at the Royal Institution to the Prince of Wales. The zoopraxiscope projects images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. It is essentially the first movie projector, with a sequence of stop-motion silhouette images hand-painted around the edge of a circular glass disk, which is then loaded onto the projector’s side vertically position. In 1893, Muybridge will present his invention at “Zoopraxigraphical Hall” during the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

1925
Tennessee passes a law that prohibits the teaching of the theory of evolution in any state-funded institution. The law will result in the Scopes Trial.

1930
The discovery of a ninth planet is announced by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory. It is only one-tenth the size of Earth and four thousand million miles away. The planet will be named Pluto on May 24, 1930.

1937
BBC Television shows its first foreign-language short film without subtitles but with an English commentary. The broadcast is sponsored by Air France.

1957
The fifty millionth Bell telephone is installed in the home of C&P of Maryland employee James S. Russell. Russell has the longest service (53 years) of any Bell System employees.

1964
A young woman, Kitty Genovese is murdered in front of multiple witnesses, all of whom fail to help her, in an incident that shocks the world and prompts investigation into the bystander effect, sometimes called the “Genovese syndrome.”

1969
Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module. Over the course of the ten day mission, the crew performed the first manned flight of a Lunar Module, the first docking manuevers, and the first two-man spacewalk.

1970
The PDP-11 minicomputer is introduced by the Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). It will remain in active production until 1996, and during the course of its production, it will be one of the most popular 16-bit minicomputers ever produced.

1981
The Brookhaven Bulletin publishes a story on employee William Higinbotham, speculating that his game, Tennis for Two, may have been the first video game. Tennis for Two was a game played on an oscilloscope, simulating a game of tennis or ping pong. It was based on analog, rather than digital technology.

1986
Ten years after the company’s founding, the Microsoft Corporation makes its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange, selling stock to the public at US$25.75 per share. By the end of the day, the value of the shares will rise to US$27.75 and 2.5 million shares are sold. The initial public offering raises US$61 million, and Bill Gates, age 31, becomes the youngest billionaire in American history. The same day, Microsoft holds its first International Conference on CD-ROM technology.

1992
The US FCC rules that companies can own up to thirty AM and thirty FM radio stations, an increase from the twelve that any one company could previously own.

1996
In New York, Apple Computer and Bandai demonstrate the Pippin Atmark multimedia system, to recruit software developers. The Pippin was developed to be an inexpensive computer designed for playing video game with the ability to function as a network computer as well.

The Star Trek: Voyager episode “Investigations” first airs. (No. 220) In it, the crew realizes that someone on board has been cooperating with the Kazon Nistrim. The episode is notable for the guest appearance long-time Star Trek fan Abdullah II, the Prince of Jordan. Memory Alpha entry