1790
Philadelphia Spelling Book by John Barry becomes the first book to be registered under the US Copyright Act in the United States.
1860
Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter by Ann S. Stephens becomes the first dime novel to be published. The format will rapidly grow in popularity.
1891
Thomas Edison is issued a patent for an additional innovation for his “Phonograph.” (US No. 453,741)
1902
Joe Horn and Frank Hardart open the Horn & Hardart Automat Restaurant, the first restaurant with vending machine service, at 818 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It offers a combination of cafeteria, fast-food and vending machine style dining. Rather than ordering a meal at a counter or from a waiter, Automat customers place nickels into a slot next to a compartment containing the desired food selection and turn a knob. The food then revolves into place for the customer to take through a small glass door. Coffee and pie both cost a nickel, while turkey and gravy twenty-five cents. Other selections include chicken pot pie, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, Salisbury steak, and a wide variety of desserts. In 1912, the resteraunt will open a second location in New York’s Time Square, and will eventually expand into America’s first major fast-food chain, with eighty-five locations at the height of its success. Read more at Automat.net.
1905
Albert Einstein published his analysis of Planck’s quantum theory and its application to light. His article appeared in the journal Annalen der Physik. Though no experimental work was involved, it was for these insights that Einstein earned his Nobel Prize.
1914
Thomas Alva Edison is granted three patents related to a “Phonograph-Reproducer” and a patent for a “Method of Making Sound-Record Molds.” (US No. 1,099,346 -8, -9)
1922
Joseph Tykocinski-Tykociner, a professor at the University of Illinois, demonstrates the earliest sound-on-film system. The track is positioned to the right of the emulsion and the film runs at speeds up to 162 feet a minute to capture music.
1934
The Disney character Donald Duck in the Silly Symphonies cartoon The Wise Little Hen, based on the fairy tale The Little Red Hen.
1959
The USS George Washington, the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles, is launched.
1975
The first live radio broadcast from the House of Commons in the UK parliament is aired.
1978
Intel introduces the 4.77MHz 8086 microprocessor, featuring 16-bit registers, a 16-bit data bus, and 29,000 transistors. It can access 1 MB of memory. The processor uses a 3-micron technology. Price: US$360
Twentieth Century Fox releases the film Damien: Omen II directed by Don Taylor and starring William Holden, Lee Grant, Sylvia Sidney, Lew Ayres, Robert Foxworth, and Jonathan Scott-Taylor to 525 US theaters. The film is the sequel to the classic horror film The Omen. Produced on a budget of US$4 million, it will gross US$3,880,880 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 47 mins
1981
Xerox announces the Xerox 820 Information Processor computer, featuring a Z80 CPU, the CP/M operating system, and the BASIC programming language. Code-name: The Worm Price: US$2995
1986
The Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center opens to assist in the operation of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET), a precursor to the later Internet, which links five supercomputer centers at Cornell University, Pittsburgh, Princeton University, University of California at San Diego, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Read more about the NSFNET.
The Rogers Commission releases its report on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The report lays the blame for the disaster on the Morton Thiokol corporation, the contractor that had designed and manufactured the catastrophically flawed O-rings that failed during the Challenger’s launch. Read the Rogers Commission Report.
1989
Paramount Pictures releases the science fiction film, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, directed by William Shatner and starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, and Nichelle Nichols, is released to 2,202 US theaters. This fifth installment to the Star Trek film franchise is greeted with a tepid response from critics and fans alike, who cite the less than cutting edge special effects and the incongruous humor as reasons that this installment doesn’t measure up to its predecessors. Produced on a budget of US$27,800,000, the film will gross US$17,375,648 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG) Running Time: 1 hr 47 mins
1992
A group of investors led by Hiroshi Yamauchi of the Nintendo Corporation purchases the Seattle Mariners baseball club for US$125 million. Yamauchi’s contribution is US$75 million of the arrangement. Although control of the Mariners is promised to remain in Seattle, it is the first time in history that majority ownership of a US major league team is allowed to move outside of North America.
1993
Eric Gordon Corley, who writes under the pseudonym Emmanuel Goldstein as the editor of 2600, appears before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance regarding network security. The session will later become known as the “Emmanuel Bashing.” During the hearing, Massachusetts Democrat Representative Edward J. Markey and other members of the committee grill Goldstein on the pros and cons of publishing 2600 magazine. 2600 magazine will later holds up the transcript of the session as an example of the gulf in the perception between the somewhat naive committee and the hacker community.
Universal Pictures premieres the science fiction film Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough, at the National Building Museum in Washington DC to support two children’s charities. The film will be released to theaters on June 11. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: PG-13) Running Time: 2 hrs 7 mins
1996
Version 2.0 of the Linux kernel is released. It is the first version of the kernel to support kernel modules, multiple architectures (Digital Alpha and Intel 386) and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). Visit the official Linux website.
1997
The Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) releases Venturis FX-2 computers, featuring 166 or 200MHz AMD K6 processors. Price: US$1,250
The Magic: The Gather expansion set Weatherlight is released. It is the third and last of the Mirage Block, and is represented by the Thran Tome symbol (an open book). The set includes 167 cards, including 62 common, 55 uncommon, 50 rare cards.
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “In the Cards” first airs. (No. 525) In the episode, Jake wants to give his dad an an antique baseball card as a birthday present. Memory Alpha entry
The website of THU Konsult is hacked anonymously. View an archived version of the defaced website.
1998
Version 3.5 of the Slackware Linux distribution is released by creator Patrick Volkerding. Slackware is most notable for its policy of incorporating only stable releases of applications. It’s philosophy is to maintain its stability and simplicity, in an effort to be the most UNIX-like Linux distribution. Visit the official Slackware website or the official Slackware blog.
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! en Español.
1999
Apple Computer releases version 4 of QuickTime for the Macintosh. This version features MP3 audio support. Visit the official QuickTime website..
MessageMedia, Inc., a provider of email-based customer relationship management and direct marketing services, announces a signed letter of intent to acquire Huntsville, Alabama-based Revnet Systems, Inc., a developer and vendor of email marketing software and services, of for approximately US$46 million in common stock. Together they will form North America’s largest e-mail marketer, which will be bought by the Internet advertising company DoubleClick in June 2001.
J. Michael Straczynski’s science fiction television series Crusade premieres. The series is a spin-off of the popular series Babylon 5. The series is set in the year 2267AD, several years after the events in Babylon 5 and just after the movie A Call to Arms. A race called the Drakh have released a nanovirus on Earth, which will destroy all life on the planet within five years if it isn’t stopped. To discover a cure, the destroyer Excalibur has been dispatched on a mission across the galaxy. Like Babylon 5, Crusade was intended to have a five-year story arc, but, despite the series’ cult status, it will be canceled after only thirteen episodes, due to conflicts that will arise between the producers and executives at TNT. TV.com entry
2000
BattleBots holds it’s third event to sellout crowds in four sessions over the weekend at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center. All four weight classes are represented in this single elimination event. The show is taped to be broadcast on Comedy Central network later in the year.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) meets with Network Security Technologies experts to discuss a new virus called the Serbian Badman Trojan and distributed to unsuspecting downloaders as a movie clip. When activated, the program collects local passwords and network information and transmits the data back to the hackers.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that an April survey conducted by the Pew Internet Project has determined that thirteen million Americans are downloading music files without charge to their computers. Fewer than two million Americans pay any fee to download their music.
The Washington Post reports that the White House has lost an entire year’s worth of Vice President Al Gore’s emails. The loss is blamed by “a technical configuration error”.
2001
The Los Angeles Times newspaper reports that hackers attacked a computer system that controls much of the flow of electricity across California’s power grid for seventeen days or more during the worst period of the state’s power crisis. According to the Times, the discovery wasn’t made until Friday, May 11th when it was determined that the attacks began as early as Wednesday, April 25th. The attacks appear to have been directed by an individual associated to China’s Guangdong province and routed through China Telecom. The seventeen day intrusion into the networks running California’s leading electric power grid caused considerable concern among state and federal bureaucrats.
2004
MailManager 1.0, an open source email response management program that runs on the Zope application server, is released. The software is designed to deal with large volumes of email, such as at commercial helpdesks, customer service departments, sales teams, or contact centers. MailManager 1.0 isn’t capable of dealing with very large volumes of mail or large numbers of users due to problems with the Zope database when an application attempts a large numbers of simultaneous writes. Version 2.0, which will be released on August 1, 2005, will implement a relational database that can cope with very large volumes of mail. Visit the application’s official Sourceforge webpage.
Woodworks Films releases the independent film Saving Star Wars, directed by Gary Wood and starring Joe Urban, Jim Peterson, David Prowse, Lee Ann Millen, and George Starkey. The film follows Woody Garrison on a journey to find filmmaker George Lucas in order to convince him to continue making Star Wars movies. In the course of a series of misadventures, Garrison kidnaps Lucas, looses the script for Episode III, and runs afoul of a deranged fan, an evil film producer, and David Prowse (the real life actor who portrays Darth Vader in the Star Wars trilogy). The film was shot entirely in central Indiana. The title is a play on the title of the World War II movie, Saving Private Ryan. IMDB listing Running Time: 1 hr 57 mins
2005
The American Film Institute awards George Lucas its Life Achievement Award at a gala tribute in Los Angeles shortly after the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which he jokingly references in his acceptance speech, stating that, since he views the Star Wars series as one movie, he could actually receive the award now that he had finally “gone back and finished [the] movie.”
2008
Apple Inc. introduces the iPhone 3G, featuring faster internet access, improved battery life, and GPS functions.
The IBM Roadrunner becomes the first supercomputer to successfully sustain a speed of one petaflop, one thousand trillion calculations a second. The achievement is notable because the system was built entirely with components designed for the PlayStation 3. According to Bijan Davari, vice president of next generation computing systems at IBM, “The latency of the calculations is so small that for all practical purposes it is real time.” That makes the system of particular use for calculating risk in financial markets. Read more at the BBC.
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