1790
Acting on a motion made by Bishop Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the French National Assembly decides to create a simple decimal system of measurement units. The earliest metre unit chosen will be the length of a pendulum with a half-period of a second. On March 30, 1791, after a proposal by the Académie des sciences, the Assembly will revise the definition of the metre as one ten millionth of the distance between the north pole and the equator. On April 7, 1795, the Convention decrees that the new “Republican Measures” will become legal measures in France. The metric system will adopt greek prefixes for multiples and latin prefixes for decimal fractions.
1840
The first US photographic patent is issued to Alexander S. Wolcott of New York City. (US No. 1,582) His “method of taking a likeness by means of a concave reflector and plates so prepared that luminous or other rays will act thereon” produced photographs 1.75 x 2.5 inches in size. The photographs weren’t reversed as were daguerrotype which used refracting lenses.
1886
Coca-Cola is first sold to the public at the soda fountain in Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. It was invented by pharmacist, John Stith Pemberton, who mixed it in a thirty gallon brass kettle hung over a backyard fire. Until 1905, the drink, marketed as a “brain and nerve tonic,” will contain extracts of cocaine as well as the caffeine-rich kola nut. The name, using two C’s from its ingredients, was suggested by his bookkeeper Frank Robinson, whose excellent penmanship provided the first scripted “Coca-Cola” letters as the famous logo. Read more about Pemberton at the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
1914
The Paramount Pictures Corporation is incorporated as a distribution company in New York by William Wadsworth Hodkinson. Hodkinson had originally founded a distribution company named Progressive Pictures on the west coast to distribute films for a number of independent production companies like the Famous Players Film Company and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, but when he decided to take his company national, he discovered that a New York company was already using the name. Among producers signing to be distributed by Paramount are Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky. W.W. Hodkinson will eventually come to be known as “the man who invented Hollywood.” Through Paramount, he will single-handedly change the way movies are produced, distributed, and exhibited. Learn more about Hodkinson at the Hollywood Renegades Archive.
1931
John Logie Baird transmits pictures of available-light street scenes, using a mirror-drum scanner mounted in a van. About now Baird forms a new company, Baird Television Ltd. As well as developing the television imaging and broadcasting technology, the company also produces kits from which to make receivers. Browse photos of Baird’s mirror-drum scanners at the Early Television Foundation.
1947
The United States House Un-America Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by John Parnell Thomas, convenes in Hollywood to investigate communism in the film industry.
1963
The classic monster movie The Evil of Frankenstein, starring Peter Cushing, is released to UK theaters.
1984
Infocom releases Sorcerer Release 6 for IBM compatible personal computers. Sorcerer is an interactive fantasy fiction computer game written by Steve Meretzky. Read more about Sorcerer at Elsewhere or If.org.
1985
Kaypro introduces a slimmed-down version of its Kaypro 2861 computer, compatible with the IBM AT. Price: US$2995
1989
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Q Who?” first airs. In the episode, Q fires the ship to the other side of the galaxy and introduces the crew of the Enterprise to the deadly Borg.
1990
Lewis Galoob Toys (makers of Micro Machines) introduces the Game Genie cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The “Game Enhancer” provides “cheats” that makes NES games easier to play. View an original Game Genie magazine advertisement at NES-Retromaailma.
1994
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “The Wire” first airs. In the episode, in order to save Garak’s life, Bashir must unravel some of the secrets in the Cardassian’s past.
1995
The New York Times announces that it will join eight other newspaper publishers in the New Century Network, with the goal of linking local online news services into a national network to publish their entire papers’ content online every day.
The Star Trek: Voyager episode “Faces” first airs. In the episode, B’Elanna Torres is split into her human and Klingon halves by the Vidiians.
1997
Apple Computer introduces the PowerBook 2400c notebook computer, featuring a 180 MHz PowerPC 603e processor, a 1.3 GB hard drive, a 10.4-inch active-matrix color display, two PC Card slots. The system will be available at the end of May in Japan and the end of July in the US. Price: Estimated at about US$3500 Weight: 4.4 pounds
Bell Canada and Telus are authorized by the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission to conduct two-year experiments delivering telecommunications and broadcasting services over specially-built digital networks. Bell Canada’s system connects to 3,500 homes in London, Ontario and Repentigny, Quebec, while the Telus connects to 2,000 subscribers in Calgary and 1,400 subscribers in Edmonton.
1998
The film Deep Impact, starring Elijah Wood, Leelee Sobieski, Morgan Freeman, and Robert Duvall, is released to theaters. In the film, a comet is on a course to collide with Earth, and people must cope with the fact that they will die. The President (Morgan Freeman) has devised a plan to keep as many humans alive as possible. Scientists have built giant caves big enough to hold a million people, and the government is going to have a lottery to pick 800,000 people to live in the caves along with 200,000 scientists, artists and doctors. IMDB listing.
2001
The Sadmind worm spreads by exploiting holes in both Sun Microsystem’s Solaris (Security Bulletin 00191) and Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (MS00-078).
2002
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Fallen Hero” first airs. In the episode, the Enterprise finds itself under attack while transporting a Vulcan ambassador who happens to be T’Pol’s hero.
2003
Konami releases Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for the Game Boy Advance in Japan.
2005
Lego Star Wars: Revenge of the Brick, a LEGO-brick mini-movie based loosely on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, premieres on Cartoon Network. Watch the entire mini-movie on the LEGO Star Wars website.
JavE 6.0 Milestone 5 is released. JavE stands for Java Ascii Versatile Editor. As the name suggests it is a GUI tool written in Java for drawing ASCII art.
Namco releases Pac-Pix for the Nintendo DS in Australia.
2006
At a press conference in Los Angeles before the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Sony announces the PlayStation 3 featuring a motion-sensing Bluetooth wireless controller, Wi-Fi wireless, and HDMI video output. The system is scheduled for a November 11th release in Japan and a November 17th release in the US. Price: US$499 with a 20GB hard drive, US$599 with a 60GB hard drive.
The lawsuit brought by Apple Corps against Apple Inc. in September 2003 in the UK for introducing the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, which Apple Corps believes is a violation of the previous agreement by Apple Computer not to distribute music, ends with a victory for Apple Computer.
PureBasic v4.00 for Windows is released to the general public. This version brought a new maturity to the language by adding much-requested features such as: Colors for all gadgets, faster file operations due to buffering, Unicode support, UDP network support, unlimited-length strings, fixed-length strings, thread-safety, ‘EnableExplicit’ command to prevent mistyped variable names, new data types of Characters/Doubles/Quads, Xor and Not operators, macros, multiple ‘Case’ selection (eg. 1 To 5), a new ‘Process’ library for manipulating system processes, and an updated OGRE game engine.
2007
With nearly eleven weeks to go till the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, Amazon.com announces that it has taken more than one million pre-orders for the book worldwide and that it has lowered the price once again for the book.
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