1794
Eli Whitney patents the Cotton Gin, a mechanism to separate cotton seeds from the plant’s usable fiber. Before the Cotton Gin, removing seeds from cotton was a task largely accomplished by slave labor. The invention, which makes it possible for a single person to clean fifty pounds of cotton in a day, will revolutionize the textile industry and significantly decrease the demand for slave labor in the US. Many historians will later mark this invention as the beginning of the industrial revolution.
1839
Sir John Herschel uses the word “photography” for the first time in history during a lecture given to the Royal Society in London.
1891
The construction of the first submarine telephone cable across the English Channel is completed.
1915
The first issue of the Sunday Pictorial, the first newspaper to make extensive use of photography, is launched in the UK.
1930
John Logie Baird begins experimental transmissions of his thirty-line television system from a transmitter in Brookmans Park, England.
1931
The first motion picture theater built especially for rear projection films in the US opens in New York City.
1936
Warner Bros. Pictures releases the black-and-white horror film The Walking Dead, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff, Edmund Gwenn, and Marguerite Churchill, to US theaters. In it, a man framed for murder is sentenced to death, but he is later revived by a scientist. It was produced on a budget of US$217,000. IMDB listing
1954
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) begins producing an initial run of five thousand color television receivers at its plant in Bloomington, Indiana. The fifteen inch set, The Merrill (CT-100), will retail for US$1,000.
1955
AT&T Bell Laboratories publicly announces the completion of the first fully transistorized computer, the TRADIC (TRAnisitor DIgital Computer). The computer contains nearly eight hundred transistors, which operate on fewer than 100 watts, about one-twentieth the power required to operate a computer using vacuum tubes.
1956
At the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters convention in Chicago, Illinois, Ampex demonstrates a VRX1000 quadruplex videotape recorder to two hundred CBS network affiliates. Within four days of the demonstration, the network will spend nearly four million dollars to purchase over seventy of the machines, which will later be renamed the Mark IV, for US$50,000 each.
1968
The final episode of Batman starring Adam West and Burt Ward airs on the ABC television network after one hundred twenty episodes but before the completion of its third season. Because the series aired two weekly installments, the series concluded with nearly as many episodes as a series that had run for five years.
1969
The Star Trek episode “All Our Yesterdays” first airs. (No. 78) In it, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are trapped on a planet that will soon be destroyed in a supernova. Though the episode “Turnabout Intruder,” which will air in June, will technically be the last episode produced and aired in the series, according to the stardate dictated at the beginning of this episode, All Our Yesterdays is chronologically the last episode in the series. Memory Alpha entry
1978
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 3624, a second-generation automated teller terminal.
1979
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 3604 Model 7 administrative terminal.
1986
The Giotto space probe, which was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA), passes within 605 kilometers of Halley’s Comet in order to examine the comet’s nucleus. Visit the official website of the Giotto mission.
1988
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Coming of Age” first airs. (No. 119) In it, Wesley takes the Starfleet Academy admission exam while the Enterprise’s crew undergoes a mysterious investigation. Memory Alpha entry
1991
The New England Journal of Medicine reports that pregnant women who use workstations with a Video Display Terminal (VDT) are at no greater risk of miscarriage than women who use monitors that don’t emit electromagnetic fields. Read an abstract of the article at The New England Journal of Medicine website.
1993
Marc Andreessen posts a free version of the Mosaic web browser for Unix-based systems on the NCSA website. On the site, he explains that “NCSA Mosaic provides a consistent and easy-to-use hypermedia-based interface into a wide variety of information sources.” By April, Mosaic will have over ten thousand users.
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