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1790
The very first United States patent is granted to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for a process for making potash and pearl ashes for use in in soap and fertilizer. (US No. 1) The patent is granted for a term of fourteen years and signed by President George Washington, who signed the first US patent statute into law on April 10, 1790.
1930
The radio program The Shadow airs for the first time on the Mutual Broadcasting System. Listen to original episodes of The Shadow at the Internet Archive.
1964
The American space probe Ranger 7 transmits the first photo moon’s surface ever taken by a US spacecraft, mapping the surface for a future lunar landing. Ranger 7 carries six slow-scan vidicon TV cameras capable of transmitting high-resolution television pictures of the lunar surface. A total of 4,308 photographs before Ranger 7 crashed in Mare Cognitum (Sea of Clouds).
1971
NASA astronaut Dave Scott becomes the first person to drive a vehicle on the Moon. The battery-powered Lunar Rover (LRV) is first used during the Apollo 15 mission, in the mountainous Hadley-Apennine region. The LRV, built by Boeing, weighs 460lb (209kg) and folds into a space 5ft by 20in (1.5m by 0.5m). Each wheel is independently driven by a 200W electric motor, and the rover has a top speed of about 8mph. It allows the astronauts to travel further from their landing site to sample a wider variety of lunar materials. During the course of the mission, the car travels 17.4 miles (28km) and is used to collect about 168 pounds (76kg) of lunar material to return to Earth.
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The enemy of every author is not piracy, but obscurity.
1898
Scientific American runs the first magazine advertisement for an automobile, placed by the world’s largest automobile factor The Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The ad invites readers to “dispense with a horse.”
1930
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) installs a large-screen television system at an RKO cinema in Schenectady, NY. The screen is five feet high.
1932
Walt Disney releases the film Flowers and Trees, the first short film to use the full-color three-strip Technicolor process. It will go on to become the first animation to win an Academy Award.
1935
The first ten Penguin Books, paperback reprints of titles previously published as hardbacks, are issued by publisher Allen Lane. Each title was priced at just sixpence each, the price of a pack of cigarettes, and features the Penguin brand image and a standardized cover design. The titles include works by Agatha Christie, Ernest Hemingway, and Andre Maurois. The covers are color-coded: blue for biography, green for crime, and orange for fiction. Despite industry skepticism, Penguin sales will reach three million copies in the first year. Penguin paperback books represent an early step in the popularization of affordable paperback books that will become the norm off after World War II.
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13 Ways to Browser Test and Validate Your Work – Nettuts+ rounds up a list of the best tools to test your work before publishing it online. Makes for some great bookmarks for webdesigners.
15 Resources for Setting Up an E-Commerce Site with WordPress – WordPress is a popular blogging platform and content management system, but it can also be used for powering e-commerce websites. Although its primary purpose is not e-commerce, there are a number of plugins and themes available that will allow you to use WordPress for your online store.
Top 7 Places to Watch Great Minds in Action – The TED conference has been helping to blow people’s minds for many years now, and that’s in large part because they put videos of many of the TED talks online for anyone to watch, share, and spread for free. But there are a number of other conferences held each year around the world that also bring together visionaries, intellectuals, and luminaries from a wide variety of disciplines to discuss innovative ideas.
Top 10 Most Famous Hackers of All Time – Hackers are a very diverse bunch, a group simultaneously blamed with causing billions of dollars in damages as well as credited with the development of the World Wide Web. In this article, Focus introduces you to ten of the most famous hackers, both nefarious and heroic, to let you decide for yourself.
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1914
Transcontinental telephone service begins with a telephone conversation between Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco and Alexander Graham Bell in New York City in which they repeat their historic conversation from 1876.
1958
President Dwight Eisenhower signs the the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The act was introduced very soon after the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1. Visit the official NASA website.
1985
Bill Gates of Microsoft sends John Sculley of Apple Computer a second memo suggesting that Apple license its Mac OS, this time naming three prospective companies who might wish to create Mac clones.
1993
A federal court jury in San Francisco decides Atari Games infringed a Nintendo patent for the security system in the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Atari Games immediately announces that it will appeal the decision.
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If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
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