1275
Chinese astronomers observe and record a total eclipse of the Sun.
1675
John Flamsteed is appointed the first Astronomer Royal of England.
1774
The Orion Nebula is first sighted by William Herschel.
1840
Alexander S. Wolcott and John Johnson open the world’s first commercial photography studio in New York City. Wolcott will patent a camera using a mirror reflector May 8, 1840.
1880
The first reproduction of a photograph with a half-tone graphic is printed in the New York Daily Graphic newspaper. The graphic is entitled “A Scene in Shantytown.”
1887
Gottlieb Daimler unveils his first automobile which he demonstrates in Esslingen and Cannstatt Germany.
William Randolph Hearst, age 23, buys the San Francisco Examiner, which will become the first building block in the later vast Hearst newspaper empire.
1925
Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President of the United States to broadcast his inaugural speech over the radio. His address is broadcast over twenty-one US radio stations, the largest “network” arrangement to date.
1955
The first radio facsimile transmission is sent across the United States.
1956
An Wang sells International Business Machines (IBM) his patent on ferrite core memory for half a million dollars. Wang’s memory will be used almost universally in digital computers in the fifties through the seventies. Visit the official IBM website.
1959
The NASA spacecraft Pioneer IV, the second artificial satellite ever and the first launched by the US, misses its intended destination, the Moon.
1962
The Atomic Energy Commission announces that the first Antarctic atomic power plant, the PM-3A Naval Nuclear Power Unit at McMurdo Sound, has been activated. The prefabricated plant was assembled between January and March by a team of contractors and military technicians as a power source that will be able to operate for years without new fuel. The reactor will be decommissioned in 1972, tol be replaced with a diesel-fueled electric generator.
1968
Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5 launched from Cape Canaveral. It carries twenty-five experiments.
1974
Atari introduces Quadra PongPong, to arcades in North America. Kee Games releases the game simultaneously as “Elimination.” The games are the first widely distributed to be housed in cocktail cabinets, sometimes referred to as table cabinets. However, all future cocktail cabinets feature a flat rather than a curved top.
1977
The first Cray-1 supercomputer is shipped to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The first Freon-cooled Cray-1 supercomputer, which costs nineteen million dollars, will be used to design sophisticated weapons systems. This Cray-1 has a peak performance of 133 megaflops, and it features a distinctive housing. The system is a cylindrical tower seven feet tall and nine feet in diameter, which weighs thirty tons. It requires its own electrical substation to power it, at a cost of about US$35,000 a month. Read more about the history of Cray computers at the official Cray site.
1979
Photographs taken by the NASA robotic space probe Voyager I reveals Jupiter’s rings. Visit the official Voyager website.
1984
The Toei Company releases the anime Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, to theaters in Japan. IMDB listing Running Time: 1 hr 56 mins
1986
The Today, a newspaper which will pioneer the use of computer photosetting and full-color offset printing while other British national papers are still using Linotype machines and letterpress, is launched in the United Kingdom.
1989
Time, Inc. and Warner Communications, Inc. announce a deal under which the two companies will merge into the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate. The combined companies will be named Time Warner.
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