1726
The Reverend William Stukeley, who will become one of the first biographers of Isaac Newton, has a conversation in which Newton recalls “when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind.” In Stuckeley’s Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life, recorded that Newton said, “It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the Earth’s centre.”
1877
Italian engineer Enrico Forlanini rises forty feet (12m) off the ground in his steam-driven helicopter. The 7.7lb (3.5kg) vehicle is driven by coaxial rotors powered by a single two-cylinder steam-engine which must be charged to ten atmospheres of pressure to rise and remain airborne for twenty seconds.
1892
The General Electric Company (GE) is founded. Visit the official General Electric website.
1912
Albert Einstein first acknowledges time as the fourth dimension.
1923
Dr. Lee De Forest demonstrates his Phonofilm sound-on-film process to an invitation-only audience for the first time at the Rialto Theater in New York. The program includes eight short films with sound and the Paramount film Bella Donna, featuring an introduction by the head of Paramount, Adolph Zukor. De Forest’s system incorporates a Thalofide photoelectric cell which reads the soundtrack from film.
1924
Rand McNally publishes the company’s first road atlas. Visit the official Rand McNally website.
1955
The first McDonald’s opens in Des Plaines, Illinois. On his first day, the restaurant sells US$366.12 worth of fifteen cent hamburgers and ten cent French fries. Visit the official McDonald’s website.
1956
The city of San Diego, California becomes the first city in which all telephone customers could dial their own calls without the assistance of an operator.
WNBQ-TV in Chicago, Illinois becomes the world’s first, all-color television station.
1970
Canon Business Machines of Japan announces the first hand-held pocket calculator in a press release. The four-function Canon Pocketronic features a built-in printer. At the heart of the device are integrated circuits developed by Texas Instruments (TI). The Pocketronic is one of the first calculators to use Large Scale Integrated (LSI) Circuits to miniaturize the device for portability. Read more at the Old Calculator Web Museum. Price: US$400
1977
The First Annual West Coast Computer Faire is held over three days at the Brooks Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California. The event is attended by 12,750 people. The Faire features the debut of the Apple II from Apple Computer, which features 16KB of memory, BASIC, a built-in keyboard, and eight expansion slots. It also features several notable innovations, including built-in high-resolution color graphics. Price: US$1,300
1978
The world’s largest cinema, Radio City Music Hall, in New York City closes due to declining popularity and supply of films. Visit the official Radio City website.
World’s largest movie theater, the Radio City Music Hall, New York closes because of falling interest and lack of new films.
1979
James Dallas Egbert III, a sixteen year old student at Michigan State University is reported missing. During the month that he will remain missing, an urban myth springs up in which he supposedly died while playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons in the extensive steam tunnels beneath the campus. However, the truth is that Egbert ventured into the steam tunnels the night before in order to commit suicide in the grip of depression. Because of his unusually young age (he had entered college at fifteen), his absence is noticed and publicized in the campus paper, The State News. After waking up from his failed sleeping pill overdose, he will hide out at a friend’s house and the speculation over his disappearance will give rise to one of the most popular college urban myths of all time. Read more about the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III.
1988
Nintendo releases Ice Hockey for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in Europe.
1990
NASA deploys the Hubble Space Telescope, the first major orbiting observatory, from the Space Shuttle Discovery into orbit at an altitude of 381 miles above Earth. is is forty-three feet long and fourteen feet wide, and it is equipped with a 94.5 inch primary mirror and a range of instruments capable of recording the electromagnetic spectrum. The telescope is named for American astronomer, Edwin Powell Hubble, who proved the existence of galaxies outside the Milky Way. Despite an investment of US$1.5 billion dollars, there are initial difficulties caused by a flaw in the design of the mirror, but correcting optics will be installed on December 25, 1993. Visit the official Hubble Telescope website.
1992
Apple Computer releases the Macintosh IIfx, featuring a 40MHz Motorola 68030, 4MB RAM (expandable to 128MHz), a 40 – 160MB hard drive, single or dual 1.4MB super drives, and the System 6.0.5 operating system. Visit the official website of Apple Computer. Code-name: BlackBird, F-19, IIxi, Stealth, and Zone 5. Price: US$9,900
1996
Acclaim Entertainment publicly announces that they are exiting the cartridge video game market and have taken a one-time cartridge market exit charge of US$51.2 million in the company’s second fiscal quarter. President Robert Holmes cites less than resilient market activity in the 16-bit gaming arena and continual PC platform growth as contributing factors in the lackluster performance. Acclaim plans to refocus on CD-ROM media and the PC computer in the future. Visit the official Acclaim Entertainment website.
Texas Instruments (TI) announces the Extensa 510, Extensa 570CD, and 570CDT Pentium-based notebook computers. All feature a 100MHz Pentium processor, 8 megabyte of Random Access Memory (RAM), and hard drive. The 570 line all include a CD-ROM drive.
1997
Disney Interactive lays off about twenty percent of its workforce, and discontinues the in-house production of video games. Visit the official Disney Interactive website.
The first issue of RLG DigiNews, an academic online magazine about digital libraries is published by the Research Libraries Group (RLG).
Head Games Publishing releases the real-time strategy (RTS) game Enemy Nations for personal computers in the US.
Samsung Electronics agrees to acquire the remaining fifty-one percent of AST Research, for US$5.40 per share, worth about US$170 million.
The website of Arisk Kamp is hacked by “nerve” and then by “punkrock academyfight”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
1998
Intel introduces its new line of Pentium II processors, at 350 and 400MHz. Visit the official Intel website.
Intel introduces the 266MHz Celeron processor, featuring a 32KB Level-1 cache, a 66MHz bus, a 64-bit system bus, and 7.5 million transistors. The Celeron is basically a Pentium II processor with no secondary cache. The name of the processor was chosen with help from Lexicon Branding, Inc. Visit the official Intel website. Code-name during development: Covington
International Business Machines (IBM) unveils a new line of personal computers, becoming one of the first companies to ship computers that integrate Intel’s newest chips, the high-speed BX core chipset.
Microsoft donates US$100,000 to the Republican National Committee, the company’s second sizable donation to the party within sixty days. The donations come amidst mounting concerns over the antitrust suits leveraged against the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and twenty individual states. Visit the official Microsoft website.
1999
Bleem releases the bleem! PlayStation game emulator via download for Windows-based personal computers in the US. Visit the official Bleem website. Price: US$24.95
Gary Dale Hoke, age 25, is arrested for posting a fabricated story on the Internet that PairGain Technologies, Inc. is the target of a billion-dollar corporate takeover. The story causes PairGain stock to jump thirty-one percent in value before tumbling back down after the story was revealed to be fraudulent.
Ikenna Iffih, a twenty-seven year old computer science student at the Northeastern University College of Computer Science, obtains unauthorized access to a corporate internet account which he uses to illegally access systems at the US Department of Defense’s Logistics Agency (DDLA) and NASA. He conceals his IP address through a telnet proxy that makes it appear to be from a government computer. Using the connection, Iffih accesses the website of Zebra Marketing Online Services (ZMOS), a Washington state internet service provider (ISP), and causes a significant loss of business. Iffih will be arrested and charge on February 23, 2000.
Sega Enterprises Ltd. announces that September 9 will be the official launch date for the 128-bit Dreamcast in the United States. The expected retail price will be US$199, about US$50 less than the price it sells for in Japan. Sega of America claims that over 30,000 units have already been pre-ordered in the US. The company will spend US$100 million marketing the system in all.
Tor Books releases the fantasy novel Brotherhood of the Wolf by David Farland as a hardcover. (ISBN-13: 978-0312867423) It is the second book in The Runelords series. Visit the author’s offical website. Length: 480 pages
2001
TuxNES Team releases version 0.75 of the TuxNES Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator for personal computers. Visit the official TuxNES SourceForge page.
2002
Activision releases Spider-Man for personal computers, the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: E (Everyone)
Capcom releases Breath of Fire II for the Game Boy Advance in the US. Price: US$39.99
Konami releases the platform game Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex for the Xbox in North America. It is the sixth installment in the Crash Bandicoot series. ESRB: E (Everyone)
Midway Games releases Gauntlet Dark Legacy for the Xbox in the US. ESRB: T (Teen)
A reported eight hundred thousand copies of the Klez virus are in circulation.
2003
Activision releases X2: Wolverine’s Revenge for the personal computer, the Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox in the US. ESRB: T (Teen)
Atari releases the vertically scrolling shooter Ikaruga for the GameCube in North America.
Eos publishes the fantasy novel Talon of the Silver Hawk by Raymond E. Feist as a hardcover. (ISBN-13: 978-0380977086) It is the first book in the Conclave of Shadows series. Visit the author’s official website. Length: 400 pages
Freeform Interactive releases the total conversion mod Purge for the first-person shooter (FPS) Quake for Windows in North America. Visit the official website.
2004
Alfa System releases Shikigami no Shiro II for the Xbox in Japan.
Computer systems at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California are hacked by a teenager in Uppsala, Sweden known by the handle “Stakkato“. Stakkato is responsible for a series of high profile since December 2003 which will continue through May 2005.
Nintendo releases the platform game Kirby & the Amazing Mirror for the Game Boy Advance in Japan. Visit the game’s official website.
The paper disc format is announced. The discs are a video format developed by Sony and Toppan Printing and intended to succeed the DVD. The discs are 51% paper by weight. Read the official press release.
THQ releases Conan for the GameCube. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)
Version 4.3.6 of the PHP programming language is released. Visit the official PHP website.
Version 9.5 of Maple, a popular general-purpose commercial mathematics software package, is released. Visit the official Maple website.
2005
The Adventure Company releases the Still Life for Windows in North America. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)
The Andromeda episode “Quantum Tractate Delirium” first airs. (No. 518) In it, Rommie malfunctions and turns on the crew.
CDV Software releases the real-time strategy (RTS) game Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars for Windows. It is the fourth game in the Cossacks series. Visit the game’s official website.
The first release of Damn Small Linux, version 1.0.1, is released. Damn Small Linux is a distribution of the open source Linux operating system specifically designed to occupy as little hard drive space as possible. The developer, John Andrews, claims that he will never allow the system to grow beyond a 50MB ISO. Visit the official Damn Small Linux website.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) acquires the Snapfish online photo service. Visit the official SnapFish website.
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Bound” first airs. (No. 417) In it, the Enterprise takes three Orion Slave Girls aboard as part of a negotiation mission, however, the slaves turn out to be more than they appear. Memory Alpha entry
Vivendi Universal Games releases Predator: Concrete Jungle for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in Europe. PEGI: 18+
2007
Fantaisie Software releases version 4.00 of the PureBasic programming language for Linux. Visit the official PureBasic website.
The final episode of the urban fantasy television series The Dresden Files, “Second City” airs on the Sci-Fi Channel, after twelve episodes and one season. (No. 112) The series is based on the novel series The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Visit the series’ official website. TV.com entry
|
|
|
Comments are closed
