1747
Benjamin Franklin writes the first of the famous series of letters in which he describes his experiments with electricity to Peter Collinson a fellow of the Royal Society of London, England. In this first letter, he writes, “For my own part I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done; for what with making experiments when I can be alone, and repeating them to my friends and acquaintances, who, from the novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them, I have, during some months past, had little leisure for anything else.” Read more about Franklin’s experiments at The Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary website.
1905
Cornelius Ehret of Rosemont, Pennsylvania patents the first radio fax in the US. He describes the device as “a system for transmitting intelligence.”
1910
Frenchman Henri Fabre, aboard his seaplane, Le Canard, becomes the first pilot to take off from the water.
1935
Robert H. Goddard successfully uses gyroscopes to correct the course of a rocket’s flight for the first time. The Goddard A series rocket achieves an altitude of 4,800 feet or 0.91 miles (1.46km) at an average speed of 550mph over twenty seconds.
1938
German manufacturer Arnold & Richter delivers the world’s first motion picture camera with a mirror-reflex shutter to stores. Its shutter allows filmmakers to view the exact image being captured on the film where previous cameras had featured viewfinders that were affected by parallax distortion. The camera also features a battery unit which doubles as a handle, a rotating turret with three lenses, and quick-release daylight-loading magazines.
1941
Universal Pictures releases the science fiction film Man Made Monster, directed by George Waggner and starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Lionel Atwill, to US theaters. In it, a mad scientist transforms a man into a monster which does his bidding. It is a Chaney’s horror debut, but he will go on to become famous for his roles in monster movies. IMDB listing Running Time: 59 mins
1946
The United States Census Bureau and the National Bureau of Standards meet to discuss the possibility of acquiring a computer. The agencies will ultimately agree to purchase UNIVAC, the world’s first general all-purpose business computer, from J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly for US$225,000. However, UNIVAC cost far more than US$225,000 to develop. Eckert and Mauchly’s venture will fail as the company continues to build and program UNIVAC computers for less than development costs.
1947
The last episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs after fifteen years on the radio. The Buck Rogers, which began with as a comic strip, is a forerunner of many later popular science fiction franchises.
1963
NASA launches the Saturn I rocket from Cape Canaveral on its fourth successful suborbital test. The S-I Saturn stage reaches an altitude of 80 miles (129km) and a peak velocity of 3,660mph (5,906kph).
1964
Radio Caroline, the first UK off-shore pirate radio station, begins broadcasting. The rock station will quickly garner an enormous following across Britain, while remaining outside the jurisdiction of authorities. Read more about the history of Radio Caroline at the station’s official website.
1970
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces the PDP-11 microcomputer, featuring 16-bit words and an Unibus for attaching peripherals. This architecture will remain popular for decade, selling over a quarter of a million units in a variety of configurations. Read more about the history of the PDP at Hampage.
1979
In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a reactor cooling system pump fails in Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, resulting in the evaporation of contaminated water and a series of equipment failures that bring the plant close to a Uranium core meltdown. Officials decide against officially ordering an evacuation of the surrounding population, but over a hundred thousand people flee the immediate region. No injuries occur directly as a result of radiation, but the incident raises public awareness of the dangers of nuclear plants.
1984
With the production of the last TI 99/4A, Texas Instruments (TI) officially exits the home computer market, after loosing millions. Visit the official Texas Instruments website.
1985
The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) measures solar wind ahead of Halley’s Comet.
1991
US District Court Judge Fern Smith grants Nintendo’s request for a preliminary injunction against Atari Games, in the lawsuits over Atari Games’ compatible security chip for Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game cartridges. The injunction bars Atari Games from selling or copying copyrighted Nintendo programs for use in video game cartridges. Smith accuses Atari Games of lying to obtain Nintendo’s 10NES security program from the Copyright Office, then lying that it had independently developed a compatible code.
1994
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Journey’s End” first airs. (No. 720) In it, the Enterprise is order to relocate a colony of Native Americans from a planet that is to be given over the Cardassians. Memory Alpha entry
1995
Kodak releases the Kodak DC40 camera, only the second digital camera for the consumer-level market that connects to a personal computer via a serial cable after the Apple QuickTake 100 camera, which was released on February 17, 1994. Kodak’s efforts to aggressively market the device will be largely responsible for bringing digital photography into the mainstream.
2000
Be releases version 5 of the BeOS operating system for Intel-based personal computers. Visit the official Be website.
A thirteen year old hacker breaks into the secure connection between the Air Mobility Command (AMC) system at Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois and a US Department of Transportation computer system at the Volpe Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The government computer system at the AMC tracks the positions of US Air Force planes around the world, though officials will deny that any such official flight data has been compromised. On March 30 and March 31, the hacker will enter the Volpe Center’s system and install a “sniffer” to intercept wire communications. The hacker will also run a program to destroy the data files that would have recorded his intrusion. Officials will claim that the intrusions caused damages of approximately US$66,000. By April 11, 2000, Air Force investigators will have traced the intrusions to the teenager’s Connecticut home, but he won’t be charged by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office with illegally intercepting wire communications and malicious destruction of property until April 24, 2001.
Microsoft releases version 5 of the Internet Explorer web browser for Macintosh computers, Mac OS 7.6.1 or higher. The new version features a new rendering engine and performance speeds as much as fifty percent faster than version 4.5. Visit the official Internet Explorer website.
Version 5.6.0 of the Perl programming language is released. Visit the official Perl website.
Yahoo! launches the Yahoo! Photos photo sharing service. Visit the official Yahoo! Photos website.
2001
Conexant Systems announces that Microsoft will use its CX25871 video encoder chip to connect the Xbox video game system to digital and analog television sets.
Microsoft announces that it has upgraded the capacity of the hard drive to be included in its upcoming Xbox video game system from 8GB to 10GB. Visit the official Xbox website.
2002
BattleBots IQ holds it’s first youth tournament March 28 – 30 in Orlando, Florida. Forty-seven student teams attend the event with their robots.
2003
Microsoft releases the 64-bit Edition of the Windows XP operating system. Visit the official Windows XP website.
Paramount Pictures releases the science fiction film The Core, directed by Jon Amiel and starring Aaron Eckhart, Delroy Lindo, Hilary Swank, DJ Qualls, Bruce Greenwood, and Stanley Tucci, to 3,017 US theaters. In it, a crew must drill down to the Earth’s core in order to advert a global catastrophe. Produced on a budget of US$60 million, it will gross US$12,053,131 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing MPAA Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 2 hrs 16 mins
2006
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) announced the passage of what it claims is the world’s first legal code of practice designed to assist the industry in curbing spam. The rules will impose massive fines on Internet service providers that fail to assist customers in reducing unwanted emails by offering filtering options and limiting the rate at which users can send email when it comes into effect in July.
2007
Dell announces that it will begin shipping a line of desktop and laptop computers with Linux operating system pre-installed, no single distribution is specified.
2008
Hackers assault an Epilepsy Foundation of America epilepsy patient support forum by using a javascript to post rapidly flashing animated graphics that cause migraines and seizures in pattern-sensitive epileptics. Wired News and members of the epilepsy forum will lay blame with followers of the Anonymous subculture, particularly those of 7chan.org and eBaum’s World. Members of Anonymous will later blame the attacks on the Church of Scientology “to ruin the public opinion of Anonymous, to lessen the effect of the lawful protests against their virulent organization” under the Church’s so-called fair game policy. However, the culprit or culprits were never definitively identified.
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