This Day in Geek History: June 27
1847
New York and Boston are linked by telegraph wires for the first time.
1898
The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum of Briar Island, Nova Scotia aboard a sloop-rigged fishing boat that he named Spray. Read more at the Joshua Slocum Centennial page.
1923
Captain Lowell H. Smith and Lieutenant John P. Richter perform the first ever aerial refueling aboard a DH-4B biplane.
John Logie Baird runs an advertisement in The Times personal column. “Seeing by Wireless—inventor of apparatus wishes to hear from someone who will assist (not financially) in making working model.” His experiments are being conducted at 21 Linton Crescent, Hastings, Sussex.
1929
The first telephone is installed in the Oval Office on President Hoover’s desk. Prior to the installation, the President talked from a booth outside his executive office.
The first public demonstration of a color television is given by Herbert E. Ives and his colleagues at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City. The first images are a bouquet of roses and an American flag. A mechanical system is used to transmit the 50-line color television images between AT&T in New York and Washington.
1932
In Britain, the Baird Laboratories exhibits a range of domestic television sets. Their screens are nine inches by four inches.
1949
Captain Video and His Video Rangers, was the first science fiction, space adventure program on television, debuts on the DuMont Television Network. Set in the future, the series follows the adventures of the Video Rangers, a group of fighters led by Captain Video. The Rangers operate from a secret base on a mountain top, battling the forces of evil. Captain Video’s opponent is Dr. Pauli, an inventor who wears gangster-style pinstripe suits and speaks with the snarl of a cinema Nazi or Soviet. Captain Video’s live adventures run about fifteen minutes of each day’s thirty minute program. The second half of the show features a communications officer hosting about fifteen minutes of old theatrical films, usually old cowboy movies. Read more at the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Watch a Captain Video clip on YouTube.
1954
The world’s first nuclear power station, located in Obninsk, near Moscow, first, begins producing electricity.
1966
The first fantasy soap opera Dark Shadows premieres on ABC. When the series introduces ghosts into its storyline, the move will be unprecedented for daytime television. A year into the series, its popularity will explodes when a vampire named Barnabas Collins is introduced. Read more at DarkShadows.com. TV.com
1967
The world’s first cash dispensing Automated Teller Machine (ATM), manufactured by De La Rue Instruments, is installed at a Barclays Bank branch in Enfield, London. The machine is called the De La Rue Automatic Cash System, or DACS. It dispense money in exchange for paper vouchers bought from bank tellers in advance.
1969
The Telesat Canada Act is passed to “establish a Canadian corporation for telecommunication by satellite.”
