1877
Thomas Alva Edison demonstrates the hand-cranked phonograph that records sound onto tinfoil cylinders for the first time.
1951
The first US underground atom bomb test, designated “Uncle,” is detonated. The low-yield 1.2 kiloton bomb is detonated seventeen feet beneath the surface of Frenchman Flat, in Nevada as part of Operation Buster-Jangle. It leaves an eighteen hundred foot diameter crater one hundred feet deep.
1961
The first US satellite carrying an animal is launched by Mercury-Atlas 5 from Cape Canaveral. The passenger, a five-year-old chimpanzee named Enos, orbits the Earth twice over the course of three hours and twenty minutes. During the mission, Enos carries out the lever-pulling performance and psychological tests that he had been conditioned for over the past sixteen months. Enos performs the tasks with a high degree of accuracy, receiving shocks for the minimal number of incorrect answers. Even when the controls malfunction and Enos begins receiving consecutive shocks for correct answers, the frustrated chimpanzee continues to the proper sequence through the end of the flight.
1965
Canadian Space Agency launches the satellite Alouette 2.
1972
Without fanfare, Atari co-founders Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn wheeled the first stand-alone Pong coin-operated arcade unit into Andy Cappa’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Instead of pursuing established manufacturers, Bushnell had decided to manufacture the Pong units himself. Bushnell distributed Pong along the pre-existing arcade routes he and Ted Dabney had worked to keep Atari afloat while their first game was being created. It was his boldest move yet and would ultimately prove successful. He leased an old roller rink in Santa Clara and converted it into a production line. Each machine took in around US$200 a week, which was nearly four times what other pinball games and jukeboxes earned on the same routes. Pong will go on to be the first commercially successful video game, this day is widely marked as the first nail in the coffin of pinball era. Carl Sagan will write that, “As a result of Pong, a player can gain a deep intuitive understanding of the simplest Newtonian physics.”
1975
The name “Micro-soft” (an amalgam of the words microcomputer and software) is first used in a letter from Bill Gates to Paul Allen.
1982
Atari files a copyright infringement suit against Imagic, claiming Demon Attack is a copy of Amstar’s Phoenix arcade game, which Atari has the exclusive right to produce for the home game market.
1990
Tor Books published the fantasy novel The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan as a hardcover. (ISBN-13: 978-0312851408) It was the second novel in the Wheel of Time series. Length: 600 pages
1996
A woman in Aurora, Illinois is charged for punching another shopper in the head while fighting over the last Nintendo 64 video game system in a Best Buy store.
Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) announces that the company has shipped ten million units of the PlayStation game console worldwide. The total sales include 4.2 million units in Japan, 3.45 million units in North America, and 2.35 million units in Europe.
1999
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 533MHz K6-2 processor. Price: US$167 in 1000-unit quantities
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 750MHz Athlon processor, fabricated with 0.18-micron technology. Price: US$799 in 1000-unit quantities
The General Electric Company (GEC)/Marconi sells its Electronics Systems division to British Aerospace.
2000
The Brazilian website of SMS Tecnologia Eletronica Ltda is hacked by the hacking group “prime suspectz”. The website is hosted on a server running Linux. View an archived version of the defaced website.
The Brazilian website of Tecnolatina is hacked by the hacking group “prime suspectz”. The website is hosted on a server running Linux. View an archived version of the defaced website.
2002
Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly files an appeal of the ruling US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly made on the settlement of the antitrust case against Microsoft.
2005
The National Institute on Media and the Family release a report characterizing the video game industry-operated rating system “beyond repair.”
Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) releases an update for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in the US via Internet connection, Memory Stick, or Universal Media Disc (UMD) disc. The update adds Really Simple Syndication (RSS) version 2.0 for audio streams and Windows Media Audio file playback.
Version 1.5 of the open source Firefox web browser is released.
2007
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reports that, in the second phase of Operation “Bot Roast,” thirteen warrants were served in the US and abroad, resulting in eight indictments for acting as botherders, operating a global botnet that infected over one million computers and caused an estimated US$20 million in financial damages and losses. Among those indicted were Ryan Brett Goldstein, 21, of Ambler, Pennsylvania, who conducted a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Nasdaq Stock Market, which traditionally lists technology firms, announces that it would launch an index to specifically track the performance of companies that offer Internet-related services, such as ecommerce sites, internet access, search engines, web hosting, and website design. Senior Vice President Steven Bloom stated, “It is logical for Nasdaq to extend investment opportunities through a new benchmark for this dynamic, evolving sector.”
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