1793
Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard undertakes the first manned balloon flight in the U.S., traveling between Philadelphia and Woodbury, New Jersey. He remains aloft for 46 minutes, traveling nearly fifteen miles before setting down in Deptford, New Jersey.
1839
Scottish astronomer Thomas Henderson measures the distance to a star (Alpha Centauri) other than the Sun for the first time.
1894
New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.
1839
Astronomer Dominique Francois-Argo announces the development of the Daguerreotype photography process at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. The photographic process uses iodine fumes to sensitize a silver plate, mercury vapors to bring out the image, and common salt to fix the image.
1894
The Edison Manufacturing Company releases the short, black-and-white, silent documentary film “Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze,” shot by William K.L. Dickson, to movie theaters. In the five-second film, one of Thomas Edison’s assistants, Fred Ott, takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes.
1909
The Silver Dart makes the first manned flight in Canada. The flight was funded by the Aerial Experiment Association, founded by Alexander and Mabel Bell.
1941
The CBS television network gives a demonstration of color television.
1958
In his State of the-Union address, United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that, “In recognition of the need for single control in some of our most advanced development projects, the Secretary of Defense has already decided to concentrate into one organization all antimissile and satellite technology undertaken within the Department of Defense.” The announcement assigns the National Security Agency (NSA) the responsibility of directing and managing the electronics intelligence activities of the United States military. Visit the official NSA website.
1968
The Surveyor 7 space probe, the last of the American unmanned lunar exploration missions, makes a landing on the Moon, returning pictures.
1969
The supersonic Concorde passenger jetliner embarks on its first test flight from Bristol, England.
1979
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 3680 programmable store system.
1980
The Burroughs B6800 mainframe computer is released, replacing the previous B6700 model.
1983
The world’s first video game championship is held January 8 – 9 in Ottumwa, Iowa by Twin Galaxies, an organization founded by Walter Day to record video game world records. The championship is preceded by the world’s first video game themed parade. The parade consists of four horses, several Shriner motorcycles, a “kid wearing a cardboard Pac-Man cutout over his head”, a few flag-bearing contestants in the upcoming game championship, and a torch bearer. The competition will be won by Ben Gold, age 16, who scores 40,001,150 points on Star gate over the course of 35 hours, 50 minutes. Read more at the official Twin Galaxies website.
1986
Atari introduces the Atari 1040ST, which features 512KB or 1MB of Memory. Price: From US$999.95
1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Loud as a Whisper” first airs. (No. 205) In it, an ambassador who is deaf but empathic comes aboard to mediate peace talks, but the mission is complicated by an assassination attempt. Memory Alpha entry
1990
The Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on a mission to retrieve the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), an unmanned satellite roughly the size of a school bus. (STS-61-C)
1991
Microsoft releases Microsoft Excel for Windows 3.0.
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