1718
The “Defence” rapid-fire gun, world’s first machine gun, is patented by a London lawyer, James Puckle. (British Patent No. 418) It is, in effect, a flintlock revolver with a barrel 3 feet long and a bore of 1.25 inches. A pre-loaded “cylinder” held eleven charges and could fire sixty-three shots in seven minutes. This rate of nine shots per minute is three times faster than the fastest infantryman. The patent describes it as “A portable gun or machine called a Defence, that discharges so often and so many bullets, and can be so quickly loaded as renders it next to impossible to carry any ship by boarding,” which indicates shipboard use was intended. He will begin to manufacture the guns at the White Cross Alley factory in 1721.
1928
The animated short “Plane Crazy“, featuring the first appearance of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, is released. The cartoon was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. Iwerks is also the main animator for this short, and reportedly spent six weeks working on it.
1935
At the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Albert Einstein is awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal for his outstanding fundamental contributions to theoretical physics, especially his relativity theory. According to Time magazine, “A throng of scientists and dignitaries was assembled to hear what the medalist had to say. Einstein genially informed the chairman that he had nothing to say, that inspiration which he had awaited until the last moment had failed him. The chairman, much more embarrassed than the medalist, conveyed this information to the audience.” In atonement, Einstein wrote a 44-page essay entitled “Physics and Reality,” published in the March 1936 issue of the Journal of the Franklin Institute.
1937
RCA demonstrates projection television, with images enlarged to 8 feet by 10 feet, at Institute of Radio Engineers convention.
1940
McDonald’s, which will grow into the world’s largest chain of fast-food restaurants, is founded when brothers Dick and Mac McDonald on Route 66 in San Bernardino, California. Its menu consists of twenty-five items, mostly barbecue. As is common at the time, they employ around twenty-five carhops. It becomes a popular and highly profitable teen hangout.
1953
Stanley L. Miller publishes his paper on the synthesis of amino acids under conditions that simulate primordial Earth’s atmosphere is published in the magazine Science. Miller had applied an electric discharge to a mixture of CH4, NH3, H2O, and H2, which is believed to be the atmospheric composition of early Earth. Instead of producing a random mixture of organic molecules, the surprising result is a mixture of amino acids, hydroxy acids, and urea. These compounds are so significant in the biochemistry of life, that this discovery marks the beginning of the search to understand the origin of life on Earth. Miller’s paper comes only a few weeks after Watson and Crick reported their DNA double-helix model in the magazine Nature.
1957
Great Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb in the air off Christmas Island in the central Pacific Ocean in Operation Grapple. In doing so, Britain becomes the third nation, after the United States and the Soviet Union, with thermonuclear capabilities. The bomb is dropped by a four-engined jet, Valiant of Number 49 Squadron Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command, normally based at RAF Wittering, Northants.
1958
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3.
1959
An intelligible voice message is bounced off the moon from Jodrell Bank in the United Kingdom to the Cambridge Research Centre in Massachusetts, US.
1960
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4.
1963
NASA astronaut L. Gordon Cooper blasts off aboard Faith 7 on the final mission of the Project Mercury space program. Cooper becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space. During the mission, NBC broadcasts the first television pictures ever transmitted by a manned US space capsule, but because the picture quality is poor, only NBC is the only network to carry the transmission, and on a tape-delay, not live.
1974
The first UNIX Users Meeting organized by Lou Katz, Columbia University.
1982
Kenneth Vance, age 18, scores 397,460 points on Space Duel by Atari Inc. after playing the game for one hour and seven minutes at the Tilt Arcade in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) initiates a promotion to offer a free TexNet subscription to purchasers of a modem, RS232, and Terminal Emulator II cartridge for the TI-99/4a home computer between May 15 and Saturday, October 16.
Infocom releases Zork I Release 25.
1983
After dropping a US$100 rebate program due to a permanent price reduction to US$149.95, Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) initiates a new US$50 rebate program for the TI-99/4a home computer and drops plans to produce the TI-99/2 Basic Computer.
1984
In Beijing, China, William Millard of Computerland and officials of the government sign a letter of intent to create a network for microcomputer systems in China.
1985
The last Lisa/Mac XL is produced at a Carrollton, Texas factory. Sun Remarketing buys thousands of the last Lisas, and is able to sell most of them at fair prices after upgrading them with current Macintosh technology.
1987
Jounralist Paul Freiberger publishes an article in The San Francisco Examiner on page C-1, entitled, “Atari getting set to wage war on U.S. PC market.”
Nintendo releases Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in Europe.
Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) splits their stock three-for-one.
1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Samaritan Snare” first airs. In the episode, A group of dimwitted aliens, the Pakleds, kidnap Geordi to fix their malfunctioning ship.
1993
A woman in Paris is surgically given two new lungs, both of which are cut from the single lung of a large man. Only previously attempted in animal trials, this is the first human to receive such surgery. The procedure is of particular interest to children, for whom finding donor lungs of the correct size is often a problem.
1994
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Crossover” first airs. In the episode, Major Kira and Dr. Bashir are thrown into an alternate universe where Bajor is a tyrannical power, and need to return to their Deep Space Nine.
1995
The Star Trek: Voyager episode “Jetrel” first airs. In the episode, a member of the Haakonians, a race warring with the Talaxians, arrives on Voyager, much to the dismay of Neelix, whose family was killed by them.
1996
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) opens in Los Angeles, California. Atari Corporation is conspicuously absent from the show. Bandai Digital Entertainment announces the Pippin @World computer. The device includes a keyboard and CD-ROM player. It can be hooked up to a television and connected to the Internet. Bandai expects to ship the device in September, priced at US$599. Nintendo gives a preview of the Nintendo 64 game system, with the Super Mario 64 game.
1997
ABCNEWS.com, produced by the Starwave Corporation, is launched. Starwave was a Seattle USA based software company, funded by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. The company is responsible for a number of groundbreaking websites during the Internet explosion of the late nineties.
Exponential Technologies ceases development of PowerPC processors.
Hackers floods NASA transmissions to the Atlantis Shuttle, interfering communications.
Microsoft releases the Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3. Windows NT 4.0 is the fourth release of Microsoft’s Windows NT line of operating systems, released on July 29, 1996. It is a 32-bit Windows system available in both workstation and server editions with a graphical environment similar to that of Windows 95.
1999
Netscape Communications releases the Communicator 4.6 web browser. The new version includes the RealNetworks G2 multimedia player and 56-bit DES encryption.
The Web becomes the focal point of British politics as a list of MI6 agents is released on a UK website. Though forced to remove the list from the site, the damage is done. The list has been replicated across the Net.
2000
America Online, Inc. (AOL) settles charges that it improperly accounted for specific advertising costs by agreeing to pay $3.5 million. Allegedly, the company deferred advertising expenses that should have been recorded immediately as current costs to attract new customers. The deferral enabled the company to present higher profits to its shareholders according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is held in San Jose, California.
At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple Computer releases Mac OS X DR 4 (fourth developer release) to 4000 software developers.
BattleBots announces plans to air the next event in June on television thorough the Comedy Central network at the end of 2000.
RemoteAccess Bulletin Board System (BBS) version 2.61 is released.
The Love Bug worm is sent from the AMA Computer College in the Philippines.
Vatical Entertainment releases Bomberman 64: The Second Attack for the Nintendo 64 in the US.
2001
Apple Computer, Inc. unveils plans to open twenty-five retail stores in the United States by year’s end. The first two locations will open on Saturday, May 19. One will be in McLean, Virginia and the other in Washington, D.C.
Cirrus Logic Inc., a semiconductor supplier specializing in analog, mixed-signal, and DSP chips, states plans to lay off 120 employees, or about nine percent of its work force.
eMerge Interactive Inc., a Sebastian, Florida-based firm that provides software for the US beef production industry, states it will close its Internet store and cut about sixty jobs, or about fifteen percent of its work force.
Hackers attack the University of Washington computer network and put install filesharing software on its computers.
Massachusetts-based, Analog Devices, Inc., reveals that they have produced the world’s first silicon chip that supports JPEG2000 image compression technology. The new chips enable digital camera owners to adjust the quality of their photos so they can expand available memory or increase the speed of Internet connections. The ADV-JP2000 co-processors will be made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) and AOL Time Warner, Inc. jointly announce an alliance to let PlayStation 2 users access the Internet.
Xdrive Technologies, Inc. stops providing free Internet storage space that users can access from home or office without warning. Thursday, May 24, the company will send their former users emails offering subscription service in the future.
2002
Intel releases the 1.4 GHz Celeron processor, featuring a 100 MHz bus and 256kB cache. Price: US$89 in 1000-unit quantities
Intel releases the 1.7 GHz Celeron processor, featuring 8kB Level 1 data cache, 12 kB Level 1 instruction cache, 128 kB Level 2 cache, 400 MHz system bus, MMX, SSE, SSE2 instructions, 64GB address space, and two pipelined FPUs. The processor incorporates 42 million transistors in a 0.18-micron process. Code-name: Willamette Price: US$83 in 1000-unit quantities
Microsoft reduces the price of the Xbox video game system to US$199 in the US, CDN$299 in Canada, and 24,800 yen in Japan (about US$195).
Netscape Communications Corporation releases the Netscape 6.2.3 browser.
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Two Days and Two Nights” first airs. In the episode, the Enterprise arrives for shore leave on Risa. While there, Archer encounters a woman who knows more about the Suliban than she’s willing to admit.
2003
Atari and Warner Brothers Interactive releases Enter the Matrix for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Windows, and Xbox in the US. The game is based on the Matrix film trilogy, and cost US$30 million to produce. Atari ships four million copies on the first day. Price: US$49.99
China announces a new series of measures to combat SARS. Foreign adoptions of Chinese babies are now suspended. The penalties for knowingly spreading the disease have been increased, and now include execution.
The journal Nature reports that all species of large fish in the world’s oceans have been so thoroughly overfished that just ten percent of the population that there was in 1950 remains. The scientists who authored the report conclude that the world’s oceans are no longer even close to their natural state. Sharks, Atlantic cod, and Pacific sardines are noted as particularly in danger of extinction. The scientists recommend drastic measures to reduce ocean fishing.
The film Matrix Reloaded, directed by The Wachowski Brothers and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Hugo Weaving, is released to US theaters. IMDB listing.
Microsoft releases the subscription-only MSN for Mac OS X browser, which uses an upgraded version of Tasman (version 0.9) as its layout engine.
Rockstar Games releases Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for Windows in Europe.
2004
A portion of Cisco’s Internetwork Operating System (IOS) code is illegally copied and posted on the Internet by a Swedish teenager.
2005
Two additional moons of Pluto are imaged by astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope. They receive the provisional designations S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2. The International Astronomical Union will officially name Pluto’s newest moons Nix (or Pluto II, the inner of the two moons, formerly P 2) and Hydra (Pluto III, the outer moon, formerly P 1), on June 21, 2006.
2006
Google Notebook becomes available online. It was originally announced on May 10.
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) airs an episode of The Apprentice television show in the US in which two teams of contestants are challenged to create a display for the Xbox 360 game system for use in a department store.
NBC officially announces the cancellation the television series Surface despite average ratings, leaving the outcome of the plot as a cliffhanger ending.
Nintendo releases New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS in North America. The game’s plot is roughly the same as the original Super Mario Bros. and other Mario games — Bowser captures Princess Peach, and it is up to Mario to rescue her. At the beginning of the game, Princess Peach and Mario are out for a walk when lightning from a thundercloud strikes the castle. As Mario runs to help, Bowser Jr. pops out of the bushes and kidnaps the Princess. Realizing what has happened, Mario quickly rushes back and chases after Bowser Jr. Now, Mario must venture through eight worlds to rescue the Princess from Bowser Jr. and his father, Bowser.
|
|
|
