1848
First railway bookstall is opened at the Euston station, in London by W.H. Smith.
1879
Thomas Alva Edison patents his electric lamp.
1884
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is adopted universally at a meeting of the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC. The International Date Line is then drawn up and the twenty-four time zones are created.
1887
Eleven years after the phone was invented, the first differentiation between day and night long distance rates goes into effect, with night rates in most, but not all, instances lower than day rates.
1929
Thomas A Edison Inc. discontinues production of phonographs and records in order to concentrate on manufacturing the more popular dictating machines and radio receivers.
1939
The first rabbit conceived by artificial insemination is exhibited in the US at the 12th Annual Graduate Fortnight at the New York Academy of Medicine. Dr. Gregory Pincus, an American biologist, removed an egg from the ovary of a female rabbit and fertilized it with a salt solution. The egg was then transferred to the uterus of a second rabbit, which functioned as an incubator. Dr. Pincus, of Clark University conducted his experiments at Harvard University.
1951
The British computer LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office I), built by J. Lyons and Co., goes into operation. The computer, which is an adaptation of EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator ), will be used by the company to run routine business applications.
1952
The United States successfully detonates the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Mike,” in the Eniwetok Atoll, in the Marshall Islands three thousand miles west of Hawaii. The bomb has a yield of ten megatons, a force a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and when it explodes, it results in a fireball more than three miles across, completely obliterating Elugelab and leaving an underwater crater 6,240 feet wide and 164 feet deep where an island had once been. Eighty million tons of soil were kicked into the air by the blast. The “mushroom” cloud rose to 135,000 feet and will eventually spread to 1,000 miles in width. It is the first time fusion occurs on Earth.
1954
The Industrial Development Engineering Associates (IDEA) Corporation begins selling the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency (TR-1). The radio was designed and built by Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI). The radio makes use of a 22 ½ volt battery which outlives two “B” or ten “A” batteries which are used in conventional vacuum tube portables. The first transistor radio produced is presented to Patrick Eugene Haggerty, vice president of TI, along with a certificate acknowledging him for his “vision, judgment and untiring efforts.” Price: US$49.95
1956
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley are awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for inventing the transistor.
1960
The first market trial of Touch Tone calling by AT&T, begins in Findlay, Ohio.
1962
The Soviet space probe Mars 1, which will later make the first successful flyby of Mars, is launched.
1968
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system goes into effect with the G (general), M (mature), R (restricted, no unaccompanied children) and X (over 16 only) ratings. The system was introduced October 7, and the PG-13 and NC-17 will be introduced later.
1969
The third Interface Message Processor (IMP) node is installed at the University of California at Santa Barbara, creating a third ARPANET node. The fourth node will be established at the University of Utah in December, and by 1971, fifteen nodes will be linked in total. Read more at UCLA.
1976
Paul Allen resigns from Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) to join Microsoft“>Microsoft full time.
1977
Chiron, the farthest known asteroid is discovered by Charles T. Kowal. It will later be reclassified as a centaur, a type of planetoid.
1978
Microsoft establishes its first international sales office in Japan. Microsoft appoints ASCII Microsoft in Tokyo, which will later be known as Microsoft Japan, as its exclusive sales agent for the Far East. Kazuhiko Nishi, founder and publisher of Japan’s popular ASCII magazine, is appointed to organize the new operation.
1979
The Data Processing Division (DPD) of International Business Machines (IBM) announces two new models of the IBM 3033 processor, the Group N processors.
1981
November 1 is the last day of the first Atari Coin-Op US$50,000 World Championships held at the Chicago Expo Center. The event, managed by Tournament Games, Inc., has been a dismal failure. Somewhere between ten thousand and fifteen thousand coin-op players had been anticipated, but only 250 players actually participated. Eric Ginner won a US$12,000 cash prize for his US$60 entry fee and Ok-Soo Han won US$4,000 in cash and prizes. Among the contestants is actor Matthew Laborteaux who plays Albert on the television series Little House on the Prairie.
1983
In New York, International Business Machines (IBM) announces the IBM PCjr (”PC junior”), featuring an Intel 8088 CPU, 64KB RAM, a detached keyboard, two cartridge slots, a joystick, a light pen, and a serial port. The PC-DOS 2.1 operating system is available as an option. Code-name: Peanut Price: US$669 or US$1,269 with a 5.25-inch floppy drive and 128KB RAM
1984
Keytran, which is owned by Centel, Honeywell, and the Chicago Sun-Times, is renamed “Keycom,” and the newly renamed company launches its commercial Videotex service, one of the earliest consumer interactive medias.
Toshiba announces its development of a 1-Megabit RAM chip.
1985
Microsoft releases its Windows 1.01 operating system on five 360KB capacity 5¼-inch floppy disks. The system operates on MS-DOS v5.0.
Quantum Link (Q-Link), an online service for chat rooms, e-mail, games, and other programs for Commodore 64 and 128 computers, goes into operation. Quantum Link will later be renamed to America Online in 1994.
1987
Microsoft releases the Windows 2.0 operating system.
1994
George Lucas leaves the day-to-day operations of his film making business. While on sabbatical, he begins writing the prequel trilogy to the original Star Wars trilogy.
Mosaic Communications files a lawsuit against Spyglass, Inc. and the University of Illinois, seeking a declaration of whether or not Mosaic Netscape software infringes on browser code developed at the university and licensed through Spyglass.
1995
At the ANA Hotel in San Francisco, Intel formally introduces the Pentium Pro processor, at speeds of 150 to 200 MHz. The processors can achieve 440 MIPs and incorporates 5.5 million transistors, nearly 2,400 times as many as the first microprocessor, the 4004. Bus speeds of the new Socket 8 interface are 60 MHz (150, 180 MHz processor), and 66 MHz (166, 200 MHz processor). The 150 MHz version is manufactured using a 0.5 micron BiCMOS process where the other processors employ a 0.35 micron process. Price: US$974 (150 MHz, 256KB cache), US$1,682 (166 MHz, 512KB cache), US$1,075 (180 MHz, 256KB cache), US$1,225 (200 MHz, 256KB cache), and US$1,989 (200 MHz, 512KB cache)
Simon & Schuster publishes CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier by Katie Hafner as a paperback. (ISBN-13: 978-0684818627) Length: 400 pages
1996
The Digital equipment Corporation (DEC) files a suit against Altavista Technology, Inc. seeking remedies and financial damages for alleged infringements against the AltaVista trademark on their World Wide Web homepage.
Matsushita (Panasonic) and Toshiba release the first DVD video players in Japan. At the time of their release, there were only three software titles are available for the players, and another twenty titles were expected to be released by month’s end. The two models cost ¥79,800 (US$720) and ¥98,000 (US$885).
The Dual Analog Controller is first introduced at the PlayStation Expo 96-97, which is held November 1 to November 4.
The Toshiba Corporation launches the Digital Video Disk (DVD) in Japan. The new system is speculated to someday replace compact discs and video tape.
1999
Motorola, Inc. introduces the first microchip that works with worldwide types of cellular phones called the DSP56690.
Yahoo! Auctions surpasses a record one million simultaneous daily auctions.
2000
Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) announces at the tenth annual Toy and Interactive Entertainment Conference in New York City that over twenty thousand retailers sold a half million PlayStation 2 game consoles in the first day of its launch in the United States. In addition, approximately 1.3 million units of software are sold with a software-to-hardware ratio of between 1.5 to 2.8 pieces for each console. About one million peripheral devices are also sold.
2002
Microsoft and Sega release the limited edition Panzer Dragoon Orta edition of the Xbox system in Japan. The systems includes a white case, white controller, the Panzer Dragoon Orta video game, and a special necklace. All units 999 units produced sell out on the opening day. Price: US$325
US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly conditionally accepts a proposed settlement between Microsoft and the US Justice Department.
ViewSonic releases the ViewSonic Pocket PC V35 handheld computer, featuring a 300 MHz Intel PXA250 XScale processor, an MMC and Secure Digital slot, a stylus, and a 240×320 pixel display. The battery powers the unit for about ten hours. Price: US$299 Weight: 4.2 ounces
2003
The 2002 Homeland Security Act, passed in reaction to the September 11 attacks goes into effect. It creates the United States Department of Homeland Security in the single largest governmental reorganization since the creation of the Department of Defense. It also mandates sentences of twenty years to life for those found guilty of using a computer to inflict death. Read the act in its entirety.
2004
Sony begins selling a smaller version of the PlayStation 2 video game system in the United States and Europe. Model SCPH-70000CB is 2.8 cm thick, includes a network adapter and DVD remote, but excludes hard drive support. Price: US$149.99
2005
Activision releases the first-person shooter (FPS) Call of Duty 2: Big Red One for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox in North America. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)
2006
Dell begins offering notebook computers with AMD processors, starting with the Inspiron 1501.
Microsoft releases its Windows Embedded CE 6.0 operating system for consumer electronic devices, such as mobile phones.
2007
The popular bittorrent index Mininova surpasses three billion torrent downloads. May 28, 2008, Mininova will surpass five billion downloads. The site’s three million daily users download over ten million torrents a day, according to the site’s administrators. Visit the official Mininova blog.
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