1631
The transit of Venus occurs as predicted by Johannes Kepler. He correctly predicted that an ascending node transit of Venus would occur in December 1631, but it passed unobserved in part because his prediction wasn’t sufficiently accurate to predict the exact time it would occur and in part because it occurred after sunset for most of Europe. Unfortunately, Kepler died a year before the event.
1768
The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for “British Encyclopaedia”) is published under the title “Encyclopedia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan.” The series will eventually become the oldest continuously published English-language encyclopedia. The first edition is published in one hundred installments, which will later be bound into three volumes. Each installment costs sixpence or eight pence for an edition printed on finer paper and is delivered in weekly installments. It will also be published under the pseudonym “A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland,” a title which refers to the many gentlemen who had purchased subscriptions. The three bound volumes will be sold for twelve pounds sterling apiece. The set runs 2,391 pages and includes 160 copperplate illustrations. However, one set of illustrations, a three page depiction of female pelvises and fetuses in the midwifery article will be torn from every copy by order of King George III.
1877
Thomas Edison records his own recitation of “Mary had a Little Lamb” onto a cylinder wrapped with tin foil using his newly completed prototype hand-cranked phonograph at his Menlo Park Laboratory. For all intents and purposes, it is the first recording of a human voice. The word “Halloo” may have been recorded in July on an earlier, paper model derived from his 1876 telegraph repeater, but if such a recording was made, it was destroyed before this recording was made. John Kruesi constructed the phonograph from December 1 – 6, from a sketch Edison made on November 29 (not on August 12 as Edison mistakenly wrote on another sketch in 1917). When Kruesi hears Edison’s first recording later the same day, he exclaims “Gott in Himmel!” (“God in Heaven!”). Edison will be granted a patent for the phonograph on February 19, 1878. (US No. 200,521)
1882
The transit of Venus across the sun is first photographed on a series of glass plate negatives by Amherst College astronomer David Peck Todd. He uses a solar photographic telescope manufactured by the renowned optical firm Alvan Clark & Sons from the summit of Mount Hamilton in California, where the Lick Observatory is under construction.
1922
The General Electric Utica Gas and Electric Company becomes the first commercial electricity company.
1923
U.S. President Calvin Coolidge makes the first presidential address on U.S. radio.
1932
EMI demonstrates its first 180-line electronic television system, which is only capable of scanning film, to the BBC.
1933
The U.S. ban on the James Joyce novel Ulysses is lifted.
1941
The Manhattan Project is formed in Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California. The goal of the project to develop a functional atomic bomb.
One day prior to the United States’ formal entry into World War II, Geophysical Service, Inc. (GSI), a Delaware division of Geophysical Service is purchased by a team of young investors. The investors were Dr. Henry Bates Peacock, John Erik Jonsson and Cecil H. Green, who were employees of GSI, and Eugene McDermott who was one of the two original founders of Geophysical Service. GSI will later become known as Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) in 1951.
1945
The microwave oven is first patented.
1957
America’s first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit fails when the Vanguard rocket (TV3) carrying it explodes on the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. With a series of rumbles audible for miles around, the vehicle, having risen about four feet into the air, suddenly sinks. Its fuel tanks rupture as it falls against its firing structure, and the rocket topples to the ground on the northeast, ocean side of the structure in a roaring, rolling ball of flame. The incident foils the United State’s first attempt to launch a satellite into Earth orbit.
1967
The United States Department of Defense issues a US$19,800 contract to Stanford Research Institute (SRI) for the purpose of studying the “design and specification of a computer network.” The four-month study will result in the creation of the ARPANET. Read the original order at the FCC website.
1968
The Star Trek episode “The Empath” first airs. (No. 67) In it, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are subjected to torturous experiments by an alien race on a doomed planet in order to test an empathic woman. Memory Alpha entry
1969
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) rolls out a lower-cost version of the IBM 2420 magnetic tape unit to be used with seven models of the IBM System/360 family.
1978
Atari installs an IBM 370-148 computer system for internal business accounting and data processing functions.
1981
According to Twin Galaxies, Franz Lanzinger, age 26, scores a record-setting 2,999,999 points playing the Atari arcade game Centipede after playing the game for six hours at Central Park Center in Mountain View, California. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.
Games by Apollo releases Skeet Shoot for the Atari 2600 video game system. Despite the fact that the game will widely be considered to be one of the worst Atari 2600 games of all time, Games by Apollo will sell US$200,000 worth of the game by Christmas, and the company will go on to gross another US$8 million on just a dozen video game titles within a year’s time. The initial bulk distribution of Skeet Shoot will later be recalled due to a glitch in the game that causes a rolling screen on many televisions sets.
1982
According to Twin Galaxies, John Norman scores a record-setting 999,250 points playing the Konami arcade game Scramble at Light Years Amusement in Wrightsvillle Beach, South Carolina. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.
1985
Paramount Pictures releases the action film Young Sherlock Holmes, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Nicholas Rowe, Alan Cox, Anthony Higgins, Sophie Ward, and Roger Ashton-Griffiths, to 920 U.S. theaters. In it, a teenage Sherlock Holmes decides to investigate a case in which assorted people have experienced inexplicably delusion that have lead to their deaths. The film is notable for being the first to feature a computer-generated character, “the stained glass man,” which was created by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). In particular, the effected was primarily the work of John Lasseter, who will later direct the ground-breaking animated film Toy Story. Produced on a budget of US$18 million, it will gross US$2,538,234 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 1 hr 48 mins
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