1900
The Victor Talking Machine Company registers its “His Master’s Voice” trademark, which will come to be one of the best known corporate logos in history, with the U.S. Patent Office. The logo shows a dog (Nipper) listening to a wind-up gramophone. The logo will later be used by the RCA Victor company as well.
1908
Kamerlingh Onnes liquefies helium for the first time, at a temperature of 4.2K, or about -269ºC, producing about sixty cubic centimeters of liquid helium. The gas is liquefied by compressing it, cooling it below the inversion temperature and then allowing it to expand, which causes further cooling resulting in the liquefaction of some of the gas. In 1913, Onnes will receive the Nobel Prize for his work.
1925
In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called “Scopes monkey trial” begins, in which John T. Scopes, a high school science teacher, is prosecuted for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in violation of the Butler Act. Scopes, who was defended by the American Civil Liberties Union, had been recruited by local town leaders who wished to draw national publicity to their small town by challenging the constitutionality of the new law, which had been passed March 21, 1925. After a twelve day trial, Scopes will be convicted and fined a hundred dollars. The the state supreme court upheld the constitutionality of the law, but it ultimately acquitted Scopes on the technicality that he had been excessively fined. On 17 May 1967, the law was repealed.
1933
Eastchester Township in New York will begin using the first police radio system.
1938
Howard Hughes sets a world record by flying around the world in an airplane in ninety-one hours.
1949
The first practical rectangular television picture tube is released. The tube measures 12 by 16 inches and sold for US$12.
1962
At 08:35 GMT, NASA launches the Telstar I communications satellite, built by AT&T Bell Laboratories, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Telstar, the first orbiting international communications satellite, marking the beginning of a new age of trans-Atlantic communication in which telephone and television signals can be transmitted from Europe to America and back. A song commemorating the event titled “Telstar” by the English surf-rock group The Tornados will be released August 17, 1962, and it will go on to top sales charts for three weeks in November.
1982
The day after the release of the science fiction film Tron, Disney stock falls 2.5 points. Prior to the film’s release, Disney stock dropped 4% in active New York Stock Exchange trading after several Wall Street analysts attended a screening and were largely unimpressed with what they saw.
1988
Bally Manufacturing agrees in principle to sell its coin-operated amusement game manufacturing business to Williams Industries for US$8 million.
1989
In San Francisco, Intel publicly demonstrates the first EISA 82350 chip set, which is scheduled to go into production by September.
1990
MacWEEK magazine reports that Apple Computer had paid one million dollars to Modular Computer Systems Inc., a subsidiary of Daimler-Benz AG, for the right to use the “Classic” in the brand of its Macintosh Classic.
2003
A federal judge blocks the enforcement of a Washington state law that would impose a US$500 fine on any retailer selling violent video games to children under the age of seventeen on the grounds that the law would violate the First Amendment.
The last original Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the assembly line in Mexico. Over 21 million units of the model had been produced over the course of its 69 years of production.
NASA announces the discovery of the oldest extrasolar planet yet discovered, PSR B1620-26 b, which was unofficially dubbed “Methuselah,” The planet is estimated to be 12.7 billion years old, orbiting pulsar PSR B1620-26 in globular star cluster M4 5,600 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
2007
The first method for jailbreaking the Apple iPhone is released on the internet as a method of installing custom ringtones.
Linspire releases version 6.0 of the Linspire operating system based on Freespire 2.0.
Stuff Magazine publishes it’s August issue, featuring a list of the thirty most powerful people in entertainment under the age of thirty. Justin Timberlake is given the number one position. Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs, the owner of Club Neverdie comes in at number twenty-eight for running the world’s most famous and highest grossing virtual nightclub.
2008
Canonical, announces that it will offer version 8.04 of the Ubuntu Linux operating system in partnership with US retail software distributor ValuSoft through Best Buy retail stores. This retail package will contain an Ubuntu 8.04 CD, a Quick Start Guide, and 60 days of support through ValuSoft. Customer will be charged US$19.99 for the support on what is otherwise offered as free software. Steve George, director of corporate services for Canonical, wrote in the announcement that, “The aim is to provide Ubuntu to users who want the software and support conveniently presented in a boxed set. Making it available through Best Buy is an opportunity to reach users who are unaware of Ubuntu or who are bandwidth restricted and don’t want to download Ubuntu themselves.”
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