1792
US President George Washington signs the Postal Service Act, creating the United States Postal Service. Under the act, letters can be delivered within thirty miles for six cents and within one hundred fifty miles for twelve and a half cents.
1937
The first successful automobile-airplane hybrid, the Arrowbile, is completed. Its first flight will take place the next day, February 21, 1937. The vehicle has a top speed of 120mph in the air and 70mph on the ground. The Arrowbile was designed by aeroengineer Waldo Dean Waterman and five were built by the Westerman Arrowplane Corporation of Santa Monica, California. The Studebaker Corporation, which supplied the hundred horsepower engines, eventually took delivery of the Arrowbiles.
1943
American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
1944
The Batman and Robin comic strip by Bob Kane first appears in US newspapers. The strip, which is a forerunner of the later Batman comic book, runs on weekdays and Sundays.
1947
Mathematician Alan Turing suggests testing artificial intelligence with the game of chess in a lecture to the London Mathematical Society. He argues that computers, like humans, must be given training before their “IQ” is tested. The concept is the basis of the “Turing test,” which Turing will describe in depth in his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.”
1962
John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, aboard the Mercury-Atlas 6 Friendship 7. Glenn orbits the Earth three times in four hours, fifty-five minutes, at a maximum altitude of about one hundred sixty-two miles, at an orbital velocity of approximately seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour. NASA accomplishes the landmark using an IBM 7030 Stretch supercomputer. During the orbit, residents of Perth, Australia greet Glen by switching their house lights on in unison as the capsule passes overhead. A four-cent US stamp commemorating the event goes on sale, becoming the first US stamp issued on the same day as the event it commemorates.
1963
A television receiver and transmitter operated by laser beam is demonstrated by the General Telephone and Electronics Co. in Bayside, New York. The laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radion) provides a narrow high-intensity light beam that can be focussed and directed over long distances.
1965
Ranger 8 crashes into the Moon after successfully photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program. View photos from Ranger 8.
1982
Ken Chevalier, age 16, scores 12,900,000 points on Atari’s BattleZone after playing the game for twelve hours at the Star Station 101 arcade in Atascadero, California.
1986
The Soviet Union launches the core module of the Mir space station. Mir, the Russian word for peace, has six docking ports and special laboratories for scientific research. Later, a veteran crew will be sent to man the fifty-six foot long, nearly fourteen foot wide station. The core module will provide living quarters for the cosmonauts, including a galley, cooking elements, storage, individual crew cabins and personal hygiene area. It also has a working compartment for monitoring and commanding the core systems supported by an electric power system, thermal control system, computer systems, environmental control and life support, communications, and tracking systems. Five additional modules will be launched between March 1987 and April 1996. Read more about the structure of the space station at the Russian Space Web. View a large photo of the Mir space station. Watch a Quicktime movie of the launch.
1986
Judy-Lyn del Rey, publisher and editor-in-chief of Del Rey Books, dies at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, after suffering a brain hemorrhage on October 16, 1985, from which she never recovered. According to the editors of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the longest-running science fiction magazine of all time, del Rey did more than any other single person to bring science fiction into widespread acceptance among the public as a major branch of publishing. Del Rey Books, an imprint founded by Judy-Lynn and her husband, Lester del Rey, produced a steady stream of bestsellers, beginning with The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks in 1977. Before the founding of Del Rey Books, bestselling science fiction had been nearly unheard of. Judy-Lyn got her start in publishing at Galaxy magazine. Later in the year, she will be posthumously awarded the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor, but her husband will decline the award in her name, saying that she would have objected to the award being given to her just because she had recently died. Prior to her death, Philip K. Dick said the following in reference to Judy-Lynn’s work on his novel, A Scanner Darkly: “Judy-Lynn del Rey is probably the greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins. She went over that novel page by page and showed me how to create a character. I’ve been selling novels for 22 years and she showed me how to develop a character. Now I know what to do when I write a book. She was a master craftsman.”
1987
In Salt Lake City, Utah, a bomb explodes in a computer store. It will later be discovered that the bomb was created and delivered by Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who argued in his manifesto that his actions were a necessary to attract attention to the dangers of modern technology.
1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Dauphin” first airs. (No. 210) In it, the Enterprise transports a young leader and her guardian to their homeworld, but complications arise when Wesley falls in love with the girl. Memory Alpha entry
1992
Broderbund and Irem release the scrolling shooter The Guardian Legend for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in Europe.
Nintendo asks a United States trade representative to cite Taiwan for failing to stop piracy of video game cartridges, which will lead to Taiwan being assessed punitive duties on their exports to the US.
1996
Ballantine Books publishes the fantasy novel How to Mutate and Take Over the World by St. Jude and R. U. Sirius as a hardcover. (ISBN-10: 0345392167) Length: 305 pages
A bright “new” star with a mass several times that of the Sun is discovered in the constellation Sagittarius by amateur Japanese astronomer Yukio Sakurai. The star isn’t a common nova, but rather, a star re-igniting for one final blast of energy known as the “final helium flash” after having consumed most of its hydrogen and collapsed.
Texas Instruments (TI) announces a two billion dollar expansion plan in Dallas, Texas which includes its largest semiconductor wafer fabrication facility ever. Visit the official Texas Instruments website.
1997
Borland International announces it will lay off thirty percent of its workforce in order to refocus on software tools for creating custom applications.
Compaq Computer introduces the Presario 2100 computer, featuring a 132MHz Cyrix MediaGX processor, a fifteen inch monitor, 24MB RAM, a 2GB hard drive, a 33.6Kbps modem, and a 8X CD-ROM drive. Price: US$999
1998
The website of Thomas More College is hacked by “Magica de Bin”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2000
The website of The Stile Project is hacked by “Dark 00″. View an archived version of the defaced website.
The website of the US Army National Guard Bureau is hacked by “BlazinWeed”. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2001
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Robert Hanssen is charged with spying for Russia for fifteen years. Read more at the Crime Library or the official FBI website.
LucasArts releases Star Wars: Starfighter for the Xbox in North America. ESRB: T (Teen)
Napster makes an offer to pay one billion dollars over five years to the recording industry in the hope of being allowed to let its members continue to distribute copyrighted music files over the Internet. The offer will be rejected.
2002
Apple Computer releases version 10.1.3 of the Mac OS operating system. New features in this version include support for several CD burners and digital cameras. Visit the official Mac OS X website.
2003
Lindows announces the Lindows Mobile PC portable computer, featuring a 933 MHz Via Technologies C3 processor, 256MB RAM, a 20GB hard drive, a 12.1-inch screen, the LindowsOS operating system, Ethernet, a CompactFlash port, FireWire ports, and USB ports. Visit the official LindowsOS website. Price: US$799
2003
International Business Machines (IBM) acquires Rational Software, a provider of hosted software development service, for US$2.1 billion. IBM had announced the pending acquistion on December 6. Visit the official Rational website.
2004
Federal judge Susan Illston grants a request for an injunction against 321 Studios, ordering the company to halt the distribution of all of it’s software products which are intended to assist users in circumventing DVD copyright protections. Illston writes that federal law makes selling such products illegal despite consumers’ rights to make personal copies of intellectual property that they have lawfully purchased. Read more at CNet.
Per Lidén releases version 1.3.1 of the CRUX operating system. CRUX is a lightweight Linux distribution optimized for i686 systems, specifically designed for experienced Linux users. Visit the system’s official website.
2005
Microsoft issues an offer to replace fourteen million Xbox video game system power cables, which have been recalled after minor burns were reported by users
2006
It’s revealed that Yahoo! Mail is actively banning any use of the word “Allah” in its email addresses, even as part of other names, such as “Callahan”. After the ban draws widespread attention in the media, the restriction will be lifted on February 23. Visit the Yahoo! Mail website.
2007
The Encyclopedia Britannica announces that it is developing a mobile encyclopedia in cooperation with AskMeNow, a mobile search company.
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