1799
Étienne Gaspard Robertson is granted a patent for his Phantascope magic lantern. The device incorporates a mechanism to maintain focus while the image is tracked forward and backward to change an image’s size.
1845
Stephen Perry of the rubber manufacturing company Messers Perry and Co. of London first patents the rubber band. He conceived of the device after experimentally slicing up rubber bottles that had been manufactured by South and Central America natives and brought to England by sailors.
1898
John Philip Holland demonstrates the first practical submarine off Staten Island, New York. The ship remains submerged for one hundred minutes.
1950
Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announces the discovery of radioactive element 98, “Californium.” It was produced by bombarding Curium-242 with Helium-ions.
1958
The United States Navy launches the Vanguard I satellite from Cape Canaveral, following the Soviet Union’s success with their satellites Sputnik I and Sputnik II spacecraft. Vanguard is the fourth artificial satellite to be put into space, and the first launches in the United States. The three pound satellite was developed in just two years, six months, and eight days from scratch.
1975
The Television Electronic Disc (TeD), early videodisc system from Telefunken is commercially launched in West Germany.
1980
The United States Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty concerning whether or not genetically-engineered micro-organisms can be patented. On June 16, the court will rule that the patent office can grant patents on any new and useful composition of matter, irregardless of whether or not the matter is alive. The patent will be issued on March 31, 1981.
1986
Programmer Tim Paterson of Falcon Technology writes to Microsoft“>Microsoft, indicating an intent to sell its royalty-free DOS license. Microsoft replies, indicating a willingness to buy back the license.
1987
Apple Computer declares six different Mac Plus systems the one millionth Mac, one of which is presented to Interface designer Jef Raskin, who started the Macintosh project.
1988
Apple Computer files an eleven page suit against Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard in San Francisco federal district court . Specifically, Apple Computer accuses Microsoft of using visual display features of the highly successful Macintosh operating system graphical user interface (GUI) in the Windows 2.0 operating system. Apple claims that Windows violates thirteen separate copyrights in order to duplicate the “look and feel” of the Macintosh. Hewlett-Packard is also named as a defendant, for copyright violations in its New Wave desktop environment. The suit will be lost in 1995.
1992
Russia launches the Soyuz TM-14 space craft on a mission to the space station Mir. It’s the first Soyuz mission following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
1996
The website of Telia, the major telephone company of Finland and Sweden, is hacked twice. The first time the page is hacked is the first instance of an attack on a Swedish website. The second time the website is hacked, it is defaced, in part, with a message reading, “All rights removed by The Kevin Mitnick Liberation Front in memory of S.H.A!!!” View an archived version of the website the first time it was defaced and the second time it was defaced.
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