1876
Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for an “Improvement in Telegraphy,” which will later come to be known as the telephone. (US No. 174,465) The patent application was submitted on February 14, just hours ahead of Elisha Gray. This first telephone has only one transducer for both listening and speaking. Originally envisioned as a way to transmit music to homes from a central location, the phone soon gains popularity as a means of communication. Within a short time after filing the patent, the Bell Company (Bell’s newly formed corporation) is besieged by lawsuits and challenges to the patent. On March 10, Bell will speak the famous words “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you” through a phone to his assistant after spilling some acid in their workshop. The message will be the first transmitted over a phone.
1926
The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation takes place between New York and London.
1933
The game Monopoly is created and trademarked by Charles Darrow in Atlantic City. It is preceded by several other real estate games. The first, called “The Landlord’s Game,” was invented by Lizzie Magie of Virginia (patented 1904). In it, players rented properties, paid utilities and avoided “Jail” as they moved around the board. Darrow set about creating his own version, modeled on his favorite resort, Atlantic City. He introduced several innovations in his game, which had a circular, cloth board. He color-coded the properties and deeds for them, and allowed properties to be bought, rather than rented. The playing pieces are modeled on items from around his own house. The game will be mass marketed by Parker Brothers in 1935.
1979
Scientists discover a ring around Jupiter while examining photographs taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. The rings of Saturn were discovered in 1610, and the rings around Uranus were discovered in 1977.
1990
In the case of Atari Games and Tengen, Inc. v Nintendo of America, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rules in favor of Nintendo, allowing Nintendo to sue retailers who buy unauthorized video game cartridges. Read the ruling.
Richard G. Wittman Jr., age 24, of Denver, Colorado admits breaking into NASA computer systems at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In his plea bargain, Wittman pleads guilty to a single count of altering information (a password) inside a federal computer. In exchange for the plea, federal prosecutors drop six similar counts. Wittman told US District Judge Sherman Finesilver that it took him about one and a half to two hours on a personal computer using telnet via telephone lines in his apartment to tap into the space agency’s restricted files. Afterwords, it took NASA investigators nearly three hundred hours to track down Wittman and an additional one hundred hours to rewrite the software to prevent a recurrence of the break-in. Wittman broke into 118 systems within the NASA network and acquired “super user” status, allowing him to review the files and electronic mail of other users. Wittman admitted to the judge that he had little in the way of a computer education, stating that he had learned most of what he knew from the hand full of books the FBI had seized from his home in the course of his arrest.
1994
Intel Release the 90MHz and 100MHz versions of the Pentium Processor.
In the case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court rules that parodies of an original work are protected by the fair use doctrine, even if produced for a commercial purpose.
1996
The first photos of the surface of the planet Pluto are released. Pluto is the only solar-system planet never visited by a spacecraft, but it was successfully photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The images were taken in 1994. To create a global map of the surface of Pluto, a team of astronomers took a total of twelve images at four distinct longitudes in the visible light spectrum and eight images in the ultraviolet spectrum as the planet rotated through its 6.4 day period in order to cover nearly the entire surface of Pluto. The photos reveal that the surface of Pluto has more large-scale contrast than any other planet but Earth. They also show almost a dozen distinctive albedo features, or provinces, never seen before. Read the original press release at the official Hubble website. See photos the original Hubble photos at the official Hubble website.
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