1920
KDKA becomes the first radio station credited with broadcasting regularly scheduled professional programming.

1931
The first commercial teletype service was introduced by American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T).

1947
A permanent television is installed on a seagoing vessel for the first time.

1950
The NTSC color television system comes into effect as a standard in the US.

1951
William A. Higinbotham and Boyce B. McDaniel are issued a US patent for a Counter Chronograph, one of the first digital timing systems. (US No. 2,575,759) The invention was invented in Los Alamos in 1945.

Production of color television receivers for sale to the public is banned in the US under Order M-90 issued by the National Production Authority.

1963
The earliest known use of the term “hacking” appears in an issue of “The Tech“, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology student newspaper. In the article, the paper reports, “Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. [...] The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. [...] Because of the ‘hacking,’ the majority of the MIT phones are ‘trapped.’” Read the original article.

1964
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) announces the IBM System/360 Model 20. The Model 20 is the least expensive of the six computers in the IBM System/360 family.

1980
Steve Ptacek pilots the Solar Challenger on it’s first solar-powered flight. The aircraft was designed and built by AeroVironment, Inc..

1984
The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), an organized effort to detect extraterrestrial life, is founded. Visit the organization’s official website.

1985
Microsoft releases the 16-bit graphical operating environment Windows 1.0 in four versions: 1.01, 1.02, 1.03 and 1.04. Version 1.02 was the first multi-lingual version and has editions in several European languages. Version 1.03 is, unlike 1.02, only released in a US version, however, it includes drivers for European keyboards and additional screen and printer drivers. Version 1.04 introduces support for the new VGA graphics standard. The system offers limited multitasking for MS-DOS programs, and it is widely regarded as a front-end to the MS-DOS operating system. It will be adopted very slowly, largely due to a lack of a “killer ap.” This release comes two years after the initial announcement of the product. Price: US$99.99

1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Vengeance Factor” first airs. (No. 309) In it, The Enterprise tries to negotiate an end to raids between two warring factions, but a murder aboard the Enterprise threatens to prevent peace. When Riker begins to suspect that his love interest is involved, he launches an investigation that reveals she isn’t what she seems to be. Memory Alpha entry

1997
America Online (AOL) Studios acquires Extreme Fans, Inc.

The role-playing game publishing house Issaries, Inc. is officially incorporated, however, it turns out that the company’s plan to raise money is complicated by the difference in legal regulations in different states. The company’s place to find five hundred investors to finance the start-up is also complicated by the fact that the number would force the company to report its finances publicly. Issaries’ legal issues won’t be sorted out until 1999. The company’s flagship game, Hero Wars, will be released in 2000 and its second edition, HeroQuest, will be released in 2003. Visit the company’s official website.

1879
Eugen Skladanowsky presents the first public projection of photographs at the Floria Theatre in Berlin.

1894
The “New York World” publishes the first regular Sunday comic section.

1929
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin demonstrates a television receiving system called the Kinescope to the Institute of Radio Engineers in the US.

1951
See It Now hosted by Edward R. Murrow becomes the first live coast-to-coast commercial television broadcast in the US. The program will become well know for its high journalistic standards.

1952
The fifty millionth telephone in the United States is installed on the desk of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1963
Bell Telephone introduces the push button telephone for the first time ever. The phones are manufactured by Western Electric Manufacturing and feature ten buttons (not twelve) set into a round back so that they resemble the earlier rotary phones, and they are available for an extra charge to Bell System subscribers. The new push-button phones are first used in Pennsylvania.

International Business Machines (IBM) releases the IBM 1231 optical mark page reader.

1970
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates gets his start in computer programming at the Lakeside School in Seattle. The school owns several early computers that Gates and his friends spend all their spare time programming. Time on Lakeside and other machines in the Seattle area is costly, however, so the newly formed Lakeside Programmers Group will offer Information Sciences Inc. free programming services on its PDP-10 in exchange for free time on the computer. The group will design a payroll program for the company.

1977
A court decides that Microsoft is free to market its BASIC programming language to others. Within months, Microsoft will licenses BASIC for the Commodore PET and TRS-80 computers, and begins negotiating with other companies.

1981
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) releases the IBM 4321 processor, the IBM 4331 Model Group 11 processor, and the IBM 4341 Model Group 10 and Model Group 11 processors, which have twice the maximum main storage as the IBM 4341 Model Group 2 processors. IBM also releases the Small Systems Executive/Virtual Storage Extended, a simplified operating system for the IBM 4321 and IBM 4331 processors.

1982
The Amusement and Music Operators Association (AMOA) show is held Thursday, November 18 through Saturday, November 20 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. At the event, Atari introduces three new coin-operated arcade games Liberator, Millipede, and Pole Position.

1985
The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, is first syndicated. The strip will be syndicated through December 31, 1995. At its height, the comic will be carried in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide, and more than thirty million copies of the eighteen Calvin and Hobbes compilations that will be printed. Visit the comic’s official website.

1987
Silicon Graphics releases version 2.0 of the IRIX operating system. Visit the official IRIX website.

1991
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “A Matter of Time” first airs. (No. 509) In it, a historian from the twenty-sixth century appears on the Enterprise, while the crew races to prevent nuclear winter from engulfing a planet. Memory Alpha entry

1993
Atari releases the Atari Jaguar video game console in the US. Promoted as the “first 64-bit system,” the system features 2MB RAM and five processors residing in three chips. Two of chips, dubbed Tom and Jerry, are proprietary. The third chip is a Motorola 68000 coprocessor. The system supports games stored on cartridges with capacities up to 6MB each. The system will be marketed under the slogan “Do the Math” and a campaign that claims superiority over competing 16-bit systems. Price: US$249.99

1994
Oral arguments are heard in the David LaMacchia BBS Piracy Case, in which LaMacchia is accused of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud for allegedly operating the pirate bulletin board system (BBS) “Cynosure” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a period of about six weeks. LaMacchia was indicted on April 7 in the Federal District of Massachusetts for facilitating the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted software by other unknown persons. The government doesn’t allege that LaMacchia violated the federal copyright or computer fraud statutes or that he uploaded, downloaded, or transmitted any copyrighted material. Rather, the prosecution charges him with engaging in a criminal conspiracy to violate the federal wire fraud statute, which was enacted in 1952 to prevent the use of the telephone wires in interstate fraud schemes. The case raises significant issues concerning how the freedom of speech applies to cyberspace. It will be dismissed on December 29, 1994.

In San Diego, California, Nintendo holds the Nintendo PowerFest World Championships 1994 video game competition, over three days. Michael Iarossi of New Jersey wins the grand prize of US$5,000 and a new Ford Mustang car.

1960
Customer trials of the world’s first electronic Telephone Central Office in Morris, Illinois begin.

1967
Surveyor 6 becomes first man-made object to lift off the Moon.

1970
Douglas Engelbart receives a patent for the first computer mouse. (US No. 3541541) The patent, titled “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System,” is a simple hollowed-out wooden block, with a single push button on top.

The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. It is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and was released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.

Lunokhod 1, a self-propelled vehicle controlled by Soviet mission control on earth, rolled out of the Luna 17 landing probe, and became the first wheeled vehicle to travel on the moon.

1977
International Business Machines (IBM) releases the IBM 3250 graphics display system.

1978
The two-hour Star Wars Holiday Special air for the first and only time on CBS network. In it, Chewbacca and Han Solo visit Kashyyyk, Chewbacca’s home world, to celebrate Life Day. Along the way, they are pursued by agents of the Galactic Empire who are searching for rebels on the planet. The film will never be re-aired or officially released, but it will be widely boot-legged and eventually become a cult-classic, largely due to the unintentional campiness of the production. Visit The Star Wars Holiday Special fan site for more information.

1985
Craig Neidorf (Knight Lightning) and Taran King and release the first issue of PHRACK Magazine, which will, after twenty years, become the longest running electronic publication on the hacker scene. Initially distributed by bulletin board services, it will eventually moves to the Internet. Visit the publication’s official website.

1992
Veronica, an early search engine system for the Gopher protocol, is released by the University of Nevada. Veronica is an ever-expanding database that includes the names of almost every menu item on thousands of Gopher servers. The name, although officially an acronym for “Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives”, was chosen to match that of the FTP search service known as Archie. Archie and Veronica being characters in the Archie Comics.

1994
Apple settles a lawsuit brought by Carl Sagan after engineers at Apple code-named a computer for the famed astronomer. Though the code-name remained internal, Sagan took offense and sued Apple for defamation of character.

Sam Tramiel announces that the settlement terms that were made public in September with Sega have been concluded and that Atari has received a cash infusion of approximately US$90 million. Tramiel jokingly warns Atari employees in a company memo that he does not personally carry more than US$20 on his person at any one time.

1997
The COMDEX trade show is held in Las Vegas, Nevada, over five days. The event features 4,718 exhibitors and 519,000 people attend.

1998
Amazon.com announces that they have added videos to their product selection and a virtual gift store to their online book reseller functions.

SyQuest Technology, an early developer of removable hard disks, suspends its operations and files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Shopping.

1999
Slashdot reports, “There is a cool new tool out there called Napster that allows anyone to become a publicly accessible FTP site – tapping in to that huge resource of personal MP3 collections that everyone has, but have not been able to share… RIAA should be scared out of their minds because users are not logged on permanently, so it’s hard to track them down to take legal action.” Visit the official Slashdot website.

2000
Miramax Films releases the film Bounce, directed by Don Roos and starring Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow is released to US theaters. It was the first film to have been digitally delivered via a satellite to a theater. Earlier in the week, a digital edition of the film was bounced off a Boeing satellite using military encryption methods. The film took about eight hours to transmit in its entirety and was saved to massive hard drives at the AMC Empire Theater in New York’s Times Square.

Britannica.com announces its intention to cut seventeen percent of its employees or about seventy-five jobs. The Chicago-based firm is one of the most popular reference sites on the Internet and employs about 450 people. Visit the official website.

2005
Computer security experts warn that the software provided by Sony to uninstall its XCP tools creates additional vulnerabilities.

2006
Sony releases the PlayStation 3 game console in North America. The system features a 3.2GHz PowerPC CPU, 256 MBXDR DRAM, built-in Wi-Fi, and a 60GB hard drive. Sony only releases four hundred thousand units of the PlayStation 3, and chaos erupts at several locations in the US due to retailers’ inability to meet the high demand for the system. Across the country, violence breaks out. In one incident, two men are shot in one incident, and in several other incidents, armed robbery was committed by those trying to take one of these first systems. It is the first gaming system to use Blue-ray Discs as its storage medium. Visit the system’s official Canadian website or US website.

1942
Construction of an experimental atomic pile begins. The pile will be used to investigate the world’s first artificial nuclear chain reaction under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. The later research will be an important contribution to the Manhattan Project, a project to develop nuclear weapons.

1962
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) announces the IBM 1062 teller terminal and the IBM 7710 data communication unit.

1965
The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe on a mission to land on the surface of Venus, though the pressure of the planet’s atmosphere will crush the probe before it relays any data.

1973
NASA launches the Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral on an eighty-four day mission that will remain the longest American space flight in history for over two decades. The Skylab crew includes Gerald P. Carr, William R. Pogue, and Edward C. Gibson. The three crew members will conduct thousands of experiments during the course of the mission, including the observation and photographing of Comet Kohoutek on Christmas Day. After 1,214 orbits, the crew will return to Earth on February 8, 1974.

1977
Columbia Pictures releases the science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Franc¸ois Truffaut, Bob Balaban, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, and Cary Guffey to 272 US theaters. In it, a line worker, feels irresistibly drawn to an isolated area in the wilderness where, after an encounter with a UFO, he is convinced that something spectacular is about to happen. Close Encounters is a landmark film for it ground-breaking special effects, as well as for its portrayal of benign rather than hostile extraterrestrials. The portrayal is a significant departure from past science fiction films, which nearly unanimously cast aliens as monsters and villains. Produced on a budget of US$20 million, it will gross US $5,379,460 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 2 hrs 17 mins

1982
Steven Jobs writes a letter to Gordon Gow, the president of McIntosh Labs, a producer of high-end stereo equipment, requesting the right to use “Macintosh” as a brand name. Jef Raskin had chosen the “Macintosh” as the project name under which Apple Computer’s signature line of computers was developed. In the letter Jobs explained, “We have become very attached to the name Macintosh. Much like one’s own child, our product has developed a very definite personality.” Gow will visit Apple’s headquarters for a product demonstration shortly after receiving the letter, but he will initially reject the request on the advice of legal council. Apple Computer will finally receive a license for the name Macintosh in March 1983, and then, in 1986, the company will wholly acquire the trademark for “substantially” more than one hundred thousand dollars.

1984
Atlantic Releasing Corporation releases the science fiction horror film Night of the Comet, directed by Thom Eberhardt and starring Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, and Robert Beltran, to 1,098 US theaters. In it, two girls from the Valley wake up to find that a passing comet has destroyed all life as they knew it and left behind a mysterious red-dust and packs of mutant cannibals. Produced on a budget of US$3 million, it will gross US$3,580,578 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 35 mins

USA Today launches one of the first electronic news syndication services, USA Today Update, for business news summaries through Datatimes, GEnie, Minitel, The Source, and Trintex, among others.

1987
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Battle” first airs. (No. 109) In it, a Ferengi captain returns the abandoned Stargazer to its former captain, Jean-Luc Picard, free of charge. Soon after, Picard begins to relive the so-called “Battle of Maxia.” Memory Alpha entry

1883
Thomas Edison receives a patent for his two-element vacuum tube, the forerunner of the vacuum tube rectifier.

1887
German scientist, Dr. Carl Gassner, is issued a patent for the first “dry” cell battery. (US No. 373,064)

1912
Gaumont Chronochrome, the first practical three-color film process, is demonstrated to the French Photographic Society in Paris. A three-lens camera with different color filters is used, compared with the two-color approach of Kinemacolor.

1926
National Broadcasting Company (NBC) becomes the first radio network in history when it is incorporated in the US as a subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) with twenty-four radio stations.

1960
The Polaris missile is test launched.

A patent is issued to P.A. Marsal, Karl Kordesch, and Lewis F. Urry for an alkaline dry-cell battery, and they assigned the patent to the Union Carbide Corporation, the manufacturer of Eveready batteries. (US No. 2,960,558)

1966
Gemini 12 splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.

1970
The Soviet moon rover, “Lunokhod 1” lands on the moon. Lunokhod is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.

1971
Intel releases the Model 4004 microprocessor, the world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor. It contains the equivalent of 2,300 transistors, and it is capable of around 60,000 Interactions per second (0.06 MIPs), running at a clock rate of 108KHz with a 4-bit bus. The chief designers of the chip were Marcian “Ted” Hoff and Federico Faggin of Intel and Masatoshi Shima of Busicom. The chip is introduced to the public in Las Vegas by Wayne Pickette, and the first advertisement for it appears in the journal Electronic News. It was developed for Busicom, a Japanese calculator manufacturer, as an alternative to traditional circuitry. Along with Intel’s RAM chip, the microprocessor will allow a fourth generation of computers to developed even smaller and faster than previous generations. Documentation manuals were written by Adam Osborne. Price: US$200

1972
International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) rolls out the IBM Health Care Support Electrocardiogram Analysis program, a computer program for cardiologists.

1974
The first Spanish satellite, Intasat, is launched.

1985
A research assistant at the University of Michigan is injured when a package sent by the Unabomber explodes. The Unabomber, later revealed to be Theodore John Kaczynski, sent sixteen bombs in total to various airlines and universities to protest “the erosion of human freedom necessitated by modern technologies requiring large-scale organization.”

1987
The Lehigh virus is discovered at and named for Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. It’s the first virus that causes direct damage to data. It does so by attacking a file called COMMAND.COM, which is present on all MS-DOS formatted disks and drives. It doesn’t increase the size of the file, it simply overwrites the stack space at its end. When the file is activated, usually by booting from an infected floppy disk, the virus remains in the resident memory. It is loaded into the memory during each boot, and once the infection count reaches four, it begins overwriting the boot and FAT areas of the disk with data from the BIOS. Fortunately, however, there are several computer experts at Lehigh University who were skilled at analyzing viruses, and the virus never leaves the university or is detected in the wild. The fact that the virus never spread is also due, in part, to its own ineffectiveness. The virus destroys itself along with its host after only four reproductions, proving to be highly ineffectual. In addition, the virus changes the date of COMMAND.COM, providing a method for discovering whether or not a file had been infected. The virus can be defeated by either making COMMAND.COM read-only, or with a simple program that returns the file’s stack space to zeros, over-writing the virus.

1878
The first shipment of new telephones designed by L.M. Ericsson of Sweden is delivered. Based on his experience repairing American made phones, Ericsson began manufacturing a “telephone with a trumpet” of his own design. The “trumpet” is an extension of the mouthpiece where a caller blows to initiate a call.

1910
An airplane takes off from a ship for the first time, piloted by Eugene Burton Ely. The ship is the light cruiser USS Birmingham, and the event takes place off the coast of Hampton Roads, Virginia. Ely pilots the plane, a Curtiss pusher, to a nearby beach, where he lands after only just keeping the plane above sea level. Following the flight, Ely will be made a lieutenant in the California National Guard in order to qualify for a $500 prize that had been offered for the first reservist to make such a flight. On January 18, 1911, Ely will land his airplane aboard the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay, using the first ever tailhook system.

1935
Western Union introduces the first desktop facsimile on its New York – Buffalo line to more rapidly convey messages to its offices. The machine is made possible by an electrosensitive dry recording paper dubbed Teledeltos recently invented by engineer Raleigh G. Wise. A year later, the company will install a second machine between its New York and Chicago offices.

1967
Theodore Maiman is issued a patent for “Ruby Laser Systems,” which he had applied for on April 13, 1961. (US No. 3,353,115)

1969
NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon from Cape Canaveral. Lightning strikes the space vehicle twice, at 36.5 seconds and 52 seconds into the mission; however it suffers no discernible damage. The first strike is even visible to spectators at the launch site. Except for special attention given to verifying the spacecraft’s systems, its activities during earth-orbit checkout. Its translunar injection and translunar coast will both be similar to those of Apollo 10 and Apollo 11.

1971
Mariner 9 arrives at Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.

1984
The Fall COMDEX trade show is held in Las Vegas, Nevada, over three days.

At the COMDEX show, Ashton-Tate introduces revised versions of dBase II and the Framework office suite.

At the COMDEX show, Sperry introduces the Sperry 5000 series of microcomputers, running the Unix operating system, and Kaypro introduces its first IBM PC compatible, the Kaypro 16, featuring 256KB RAM, a floppy drive, and hard drive. Price: US$3,295 Weight: 35lbs

At the COMDEX show, Texas Instruments (TI) introduces the TI Pro-Lite computer, with 25-line LCD screen. Price: US$2,995

1988
The Fall COMDEX trade show is held Monday, November 14 through Friday, November 18 in Las Vegas, Nevada, over five days. During the event, a film crew captures footage for an upcoming film, “Above the Law” starring Steven Seagal, while disguised with press credentials. Due to scheduling conflicts, the crew was unable to attend The Summer Consumer Electronics Show (SCES) in Chicago, where the movie is actually set.

1991
Microsoft announces the Multimedia Edition of Works for Windows 2.0. It’s Microsoft’s first business application to incorporate multimedia.

1992
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Quality of Life” first airs. (No. 609) In it, Data considers risking human lives to preserve robotic life forms that he believes qualify as lifeforms. Memory Alpha entry

1928
Vladimir Zworykin is granted a patent for a color television imaging tube that employs cathode ray tubes and a screen composed of a mosaic of squares in the three primary colors. Several later biographers will call him the “true inventor of television.”

1955
The first live US television program originating from outside the continental United States is broadcast from Havana, Cuba.

1957
Gordon Gould, a doctoral research student at Columbia University and a former member of the Manhattan Project, completes the design of a light-emitting version of the microwave emitting maser, which he names Light Amplication by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation (LASER).

1971
The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first space probe to orbit another planet when it enters into orbit around Mars. The probe’s mission is to return photographs that will map seventy percent of the surface while conducting a study of the planet’s atmosphere.

1974
Atari releases Touch Me to arcades. In 1977, the game will inspire the Simon handheld game. The game features four colored buttons, which players must select in a sequence identical to the one shown to them.

1981
Microsoft holds its second annual meeting in the Seahawks Room of the Ramada Inn across Lake Washington from Seattle.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Scott Safran, age 15, of Cherry Hill, New Jersey sets a world record by scoring 41,336,440 points playing the Atari arcade game Asteroids after playing the game for fifty-three hours and four minutes at the All-American Billiard Company in Newton, Pennsylvania. The record is especially significant due to the difficulty of the game, for having wrested the high score from famed gamer and local actor Leo Daniels, and, later, for standing as a record for twenty-five years. Twenty years after the winning game, the April 22, 2002 edition of Newsweek magazine will carry a story about Walter Day, official scorekeeper of the arcade game world and the founder of Twin Galaxies, and his search for Safran following his record breaking game entitled, The Disappearing Asteroids Ace. In it, Day chronicles his search for the boy, which, at one point had lead to “Wanted” poster being hung in arcades around the nation and a thousand dollar reward for information. However, the search ends in Day’s discovery that Safran had died in March 1989 in a fall from his family’s roof while trying to rescue his cat. “I must say, I was crushed,” Day said. “Here I was thinking that we’d be able to have a great ceremony with him smiling and accepting all the accolades that he so richly deserved. And then I find out that he’s no longer with us.” Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1983
One of the earliest transistorized computers ever designed, the MIT TX-0, is re-activated for the third and final time at The Computer Museum in Marlboro, Massachusetts. Designed at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the machine was reconstructed by John McKenzie and MIT Professor Jack Dennis.

1984
Jack Tramiel holds his first press conference since acquiring Atari to announce his intention to manufacture and market a new line of 16 and 32-bit computers.

1988
IBM and Microsoft expand their prior joint development agreement to include a range of system software, which will later include MS-DOS, Microsoft LAN, and Microsoft OS/2.

1989
Atari announces that it has begun shipping the STacy computer, a portable version of the 1040ST, featuring a 8MHz Motorola MC 68000 CPU, 1 or 4 MHz RAM, a backlit monochrome Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) display, a keyboard, a trak-ball mouse, a built-in 3.5″ double-sided drive, and a 20 or 40MB hard drive. Weight: 15lb

Atari introduces the 1040STe, the latest generation in the 1040ST line of computers. The system features “Enhanced Capabilities for Home, MIDI Applications,” including a 4,096 color extended palette, 8-bit digital stereo sound, and exceptional hardware-based scrolling technology. The system is expected to ship during the first quarter of 1990.

Atari introduces a True 32-bit Bus System, the TT 030, featuring an 16MHz Motorola 68030 CPU, two serial ports, resolutions of up to 640 x 480 in color or 1280 x 960 in monochrome. The system is announced to be available during the first quarter of 1990. Price: US$2,995 (2MB RAM, 50MB hard-drive)

The Fall COMDEX tradeshow is held in Las Vegas, Nevada, over five days. At it, International Business Machines (IBM) strongly endorses Microsoft Windows for low end computers and Microsoft publicly endorses OS/2 as a platform for higher-end computers. They also announce that they have entered into an agreement to jointly develop a range of software offerings for personal computer using Intel 386 and 486 processors through the nineties, including improved versions of MS-DOS, Microsoft LAN, and Microsoft OS/2.

Microsoft and International Business Machines (IBM) issue a joint statement announcing that Microsoft will hold back features in the development of Windows to promote industry acceptance of OS/2.

Someone using the name Dave Rhodes uploads the Make Money Fast pyramid scheme letter to Usenet for the first time. The electronic chain letter will become so infamous that the phrase “Make Money Fast” will become synonymous with the word scam. It’s uncertain whether or not Dave Rhodes is real person, but some people will later claim that he was a student at Columbia Union College.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Price” first airs. (No. 308) In it, Troi falls in love with a charismatic negotiator who vies for rights to a wormhole, but several different groups are bidding for right to the wormhole as it may be the only known stable wormhole in existence. Memory Alpha entry

1901
The first Nobel Prize for Physics is awarded to Wilhelm Röentgen for the discovery of X-rays.

1915
Theodore William Richards of Harvard University becomes the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

1933
Hugh Gray captures what he claims to be the first known photo of the Loch Ness Monster.

1937
Alan Turing publishes a paper entitled “On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungs-problem.” In it, Turing provides an abstraction that will form the basic theory of computability for several decades. Later renamed the Turing Machine, this abstract engine described in this paper will provide the fundamental concepts of computers that other inventors will later conceive independently.

1941
The first heredity clinic in the US is opened by the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The clinic collects data on human heredity and offers family counseling.

1946
In Japan, the United States Army holds a contest pitting a champion Japanese abacus (soroban) user against a US soldier operating the using the most cutting-edge calculating machine of the day. In four out of five rounds, the abacus user wins.

1975
According to a later application filed with the New Mexico Office of the Secretary of the State, Microsoft begins using its tradename “to identify computer programs for use in automatic data processing systems; pre-programming processing systems; and data processing services including computer programming services.”

1980
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) announces the IBM 3081 processor complex and the IBM 3033 model group 2, two processors that will extend the power and range of IBM’s largest computer systems. Both processors are developed and manufactured in Poughkeepsie, New York.

The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn, passing within 77,000 miles of the planet’s south pole, and it transmits images of Saturn’s rings across nearly a billion miles of space, back to NASA.

1981
The Space Shuttle Columbia becomes the first spacecraft to be reused on a second mission when it is launched at 3:10pm GMT from Cape Canaveral.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Doug Nelson scores a record-setting 9,980,420 points playing the Midway arcade game Pac-Man at the Fun Factory arcade in Bakersfield, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

1983
Microsoft Windows is first mentioned on Usenet.

1984
Astronaut Joseph Allen executes the first salvage operation in space when a US$35 million Palapa B-2 communication satellite is retrieved by the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Lotus Development officially announces the Jazz office suite for the Macintosh 512K, which will include communications functions, database, graphics, spreadsheet, and word processing. The software will go on to be a complete failure, despite the incredible success of the company’s Lotus 1-2-3 for IBM-compatible computers. Later critics will credit the software’s to overpricing and a lack of brand recognition caused by not giving it the Lotus name. Read an archived review of the software at Atari Magazine. Price: US$595

Richard Sandza’s article on the world of the Hacker BBS, “The Night of the Hackers“, appears in Newsweek magazine. The article introduces many would-be hackers to BBS technology and significantly contributed to the popularity of BBS communities in the mid-eighties.