1789
Sir William Herschel discovers Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
1830
The “Tom Thumb,” the first locomotive built in America, goes into service, running between Baltimore and Ellicotts Mill. It is the first railway service in the United States.
1844
The Count of Monte Cristo is first published in the Journal des Débats in eighteen parts. Publication runs through January, 1846. Complete versions of the novel in the original French will be published throughout the nineteenth century. The most popular English translation will be published in 1846 by Chapman and Hall.
1845
The first issue of Scientific American is published by Rufus Porter, a schoolmaster, inventor, and editor. While the paper is still just a small weekly journal with a circulation less than three hundred, he will sell it for US$800 in July 1846 to twenty year old Alfred Ely Beach and Orson Desaix Munn. Together, they will build its circulation to ten thousand by 1848, twenty thousand by 1852, and thirty thousand by 1853. Visit the journal’s current website.
1859
A geomagnetic storm causes the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly that it is seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe, and even in Japan.
1883
The first controlled flight in a glider is made by John J. Montgomery at Wheeler Hill, California. He sails a distance of 603 feet at an altitude of about fifteen feet. Read more at the Smithsonian.
1979
The first British telephone exchange opens on Coleman Street in London, England.
1884
The first known photograph of a tornado is taken.
1898
Caleb Bradham renames his carbonated soft drink “Pepsi-Cola“.
1922
Station WEAF, New York, broadcasts a ten minute advertisement promoting a group of apartment buildings in Queens for Queensboro Realty Company, which costs US$100. It is the first radio commercial, and the beginning of what is known as as toll broadcasting.
1940
CBS gives a public demonstration of a field sequential color television system, which was devised by Dr. Peter Goldmark, using Kodachrome films and slides. The scanning rate of the system is twenty frames per second (FPS) for each of the three primary colors (red, green, and blue), making a total rate of 60 fps, twice the rate of the 441-line 30fps monochrome system currently in use. Each frame comprises two interlaced fields. The scanning rate will be increased to 24 fps per color, making the system incompatible with the existing system.
1953
Nippon Television broadcasts Japan’s first television show, as well as its first television advertisement.
1958
Jack St. Clair Kilby, of Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI), demonstrates a mutivibrator circuit of discreet silicon elements to Willis Adcock. Although the demonstration is a success, the circuit isn’t integrated, and Kilby moves on to demonstrate an Integrated Circuit (IC) in September.
1962
The BBC conducts its first stereo radio test transmissions from Wrotham using the Zenith-GE system.
1980
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) representatives meet at Microsoft again. Bill Gates signs a consulting agreement for US$15,000 to develop the software specifications for IBM’s personal computer. Jack Sams asks about alternatives to CP/M-86. Gates replies that he might find one.
1984
An article in the Business section of the San Jose Mercury News reveals that Atari has scrapped plans to launch the Atari 7800 game system which was announced by Warner’s Atari just days before Tramiel’s takeover.
Blogger’s Note: This blog has long reported August 28th, 1991 as the date Space Shuttle Atlantis (mission STS-43) sent the first email message from space via AppleLink. Despite corroboration from Apple Confidential 2.0, this date is incorrect. Mission STS-43 end on August 11th. The email in question was sent on Sunday, August 4th, 1991, according to an article published by the Houston Chronicle.
1992
A US Court of Appeals reverses the decision in Sega Enterprises vs Accolade, which was ruled in Sega’s favor in April. The new ruling in the game cartridge copyright infringement suit accepts Accolade’s claim of “fair use” of Sega’s copyrighted games, to learn how to create other games for the Sega game console, which were then created without knowledge of the disassembled object code. This ruling allows software developers to learn from hidden software interfaces, when no other means is available.
1993
The NASA spacecraft Galileo takes the first photograph of an asteroid with its own moon. Asteroid 243 Ida and its newly-discovered moon, Dactyl are imaged about fourteen minutes before Galileo’s closest approach to the asteroid, on its mission to Jupiter. Ida is irregularly shaped and about 32 miles (52km) in length. Its surface is covered in craters, including many degraded craters, which indicates that Ida’s surface is far older than previously thought. The photo will be released on March 26, 1994.
1995
Apple Computer releases its first shipments of PowerBook 5300 portable computers. Within the first three weeks of sales, less than one thousand are sold and they must be recalled due to overheating lithium ion batteries which cause two units to burst into flames.
1997
The European Gen Con gaming convention is held August 28 – 31 at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England. Visit the event’s official website.
Larry Kaplan, Jerry Jessop, Larry Anderson, Brian Wiklem, Don Thomas and others gather at Wiklem’s home from about 10:30pm to 3:00am the next morning. A film crew from the Electric Playground, a Candian television series focused on video games, interview them for the series’ first thirteen episode season.
1998
Apple Computer releases the iMac in Japan. Price: ¥178,000 (US$1,227)
International Business Machines (IBM) announces plans to offer a new powerful personal computer called the Aptiva SE7. The new system features a 450MHz Intel Pentium II processor and a 16.8GB hard drive. IBM will also offer the Aptiva E4N that is based on on the Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) K6 350 MHz microprocessor for US$1,299.
2000
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announces that personal computer manufacturers have begun shipping systems equipped with the 1.1GHz Athalon processor for around US$2,500.
Intel temporarily ceases production of its 1.13GHz Pentium III processor, and recalls those that have been shipped, due to a problem that might cause some applications to freeze. The chip began shipping Monday, July 31, 2000. George Alfs, an Intel spokesperson, insists that the quantity shipped to date is a small number.
2002
For the third time in five weeks, the website of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) comes under online attack by activists irate about the group’s legal efforts to put an end to music-swapping. The website of the RIAA is defaced with the message, “The RIAA wishes to apologise for the heavy-handed manner in which the popular Chinese site Listen4Ever was closed down, and would like to present the following items for free download as a token of its goodwill,” and several copyrighted MP3 files were uploaded to the server. The site’s network administrators are shut down the site to look for the hole in its Web server. Additionally, the defaced site features faux links such as, “Inside the RIAA with Eric Cartman” and “Piracy can be beneficial to the music industry,” as well as a real link entitled, “Where can I find information on giant monkeys?” which takes browsers to the biography of Hilary Rosen, the chief executive officer of the RIAA.
2003
Canadian software maker Corel announces its US$98 million acquisition by Vector Capital of San Francisco, California, has been completed.
2004
The Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, and TheOpenCD celebrate the first annual Software Freedom Day.
Version 5.0.28 of the Apache Tomcat cross-platform application server. Visit the application’s official website.
2006
TeliaSonera is the first to launch a Wi-Fi-based Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) service, which they call “Home Free.” Visit the service’s official website.
Time magazine features a picture of Disney’s Dopey and Doc characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Inside, an article reveals the results of a recent survey showing that 77% of Americans polled could name two of the Seven Dwarfs, far higher than the number who could name two judges on the US Supreme Court.
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