1609
Galileo Galilei first observes the Moon through his telescope, and, noting the irregularities of its crescent face, draws watercolor sketches of his discoveries.
1886
George Westinghouse opens the first commercially successful alternating current power plant in the US in Buffalo, New York to compete against Edison’s direct current ventures. Alternating current power can be transmitted much further than direct current power by using transformers at the source for a higher voltage, which decreases the loss of energy.
1899
Aluminium is first used commercially in the US as an electrical transmission conductor for the Hartford Electric Light Company of Hartford, Connecticut.
1901
Frank Hornby is granted a patent for Meccano, an “Improvements in toy or educational devices for children and young people.” Known at first as “Mechanics Made Easy,” the invention will become a global success. In addition to be an early Geek toy, Meccano is the forerunner of other great Geek toys such as Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Legos, the Erector Set, etc. Read more about “Frank Hornby, the Boy Who Made $1,000,000 With A Toy“.
1924
The first photograph facsimile is transmitted by radio across the Atlantic Ocean as a public demonstration were received in New York, where they will published next day in the New York Herald Tribune. The photos include pictures of British government officials, the Oxford team winning in a relay race in Cambridge, a steamship aground on the banks of the Thames, and the proverb, “one picture is worth a thousand words” written out.
1936
The first coaxial cable is installed between New York and Philadelphia for multi-channel telephone tests. The coaxial cable is demonstrated by Frank B. Jewett, the president of Bell Telephone Laboratories, with an inaugural call to the FCC in Washington, D.C.
1954
In Sylacauga, Alabama, Ann Hodges, age 32, is bruised on the arm and hip by a meteorite that fell through the roof of her house into her living room and bounced off her wooden radio to strike her as she lay on her couch. The meteorite fragment weighs nine pounds (4kg) and is about six inches (15 cm) in diameter. Scientists believe that the fragment is a piece of a larger chondrite which witnesses report exploded over central Alabama at about 2pm with a bright flash. In 1956, Hodges will donate the fragment to the Alabama Museum of Natural History, where it will be dubbed the Hodges Meteorite.
1956
The CBS program Douglas Edwards and the News becomes the first live broadcast to ever be video recorded. It is recorded in New York on an Ampex machine and played back three hours later on the west coast. The program is recorded by two Ampex machines, as well as by 35mm and 16mm film machines to assure success.
1959
The first two IBM 7090 mainframe computers are delivered. The popular transistorized mainframe was designed for scientific research and large-scale technological applications. One of the units will be used in the Mercury and Gemini space missions.
1964
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) introduces the IBM 1800 data acquisition and control system, which can monitor an assembly line, control a steel-making process, or analyze the status of a missile in flight.
1965
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) opens the largest computer program library in the world in Hawthorne, New York.
1983
At the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Radio Shack unveils the Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000 computer, featuring an 8 MHz Intel 80186 processor, 128KB RAM, two 720KB disk drives, and the MS-DOS 2.0 operating system. Base Price: US$2,750 Optional 12-inch monochrome monitor: US$250 Optional 10MB hard drive Optional color graphics card: US$750 Optional color monitor: US$800 Optional Extra 128KB RAM: US$300 Optional monochrome graphics card: US$450 Visit the event’s official website.
1987
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Haven” first airs. (No. 111) In it, Counselor Troi is visited by her mother, who has come to prepare her for an arranged marriage. Memory Alpha entry
1989
In Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the World of Commodore trade show is held, over five days.
1995
Virgin Interactive releases the horror game The 11th Hour for Windows in the US. ESRB: M (Mature)
1997
Activision releases the first-person shooter (FPS) Quake II for personal computers in the US. It is not a sequel to the storyline of the blockbuster game Quake, but, rather, it is an entirely new game using the name Quake for marketing purposes. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)
1998
Blizzard Entertainment releases the expansion pack for the real-time strategy (RTS) game StarCraft: Brood War for personal computers. ESRB: T (Teen)
Sega announces that it has sold 150,000 units of its new Dreamcast video game console in its first day of sales in Japan. Price: ¥29,800
1999
Business.com, a search engine, is sold for US$7.5 million after it was purchased in 1997 for US$150,000. Visit the website.
Judge Richard Posner, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, begins meeting with Microsoft representatives and the US Justice Department in an attempt to mediate a settlement in the pending antitrust trial. Posner was asked by US District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to mediate negotiations between the two parties after Jackson ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly.
Microsoft releases Service Pack 6a for the Windows NT 4.0 operating system.
2000
The hacking group “prime suspectz” defaces the Brazilian websites Dell Computadores, Governo do Estado de Sao Paulo, and Senado Federal. The websites are hosted on a server running Windows NT. View an archived version of the defaced Dell, Governo, and Senado websites.
2004
Fortran 2003 is released.
Longtime Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings finally loses, leaving the show with US$2,520,700, the largest prize in US television history.
The optical network speed record is broken by the so-called High Energy Physics team with a sustained speed of 101GB per second between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, the equivalent of 180 DVD movies a minute.
Version 2.4 of the Python programming language is released. Visit the language’s official website.
Version 5.8.6 of the Perl programming language is released. Visit the language’s official website.
2005
d0c releases version 0.7.0 of the Rufus bittorrent client for Windows. The client is notable for being written in Python. Visit the application’s official website.
Version 1.5 of the Firefox web browser is released. Visit the application’s official website.
2006
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 2600 MHz Athlon 64 FX-70, 2800 MHz Athlon 64 FX-72, and 3000 MHz Athlon 64 FX-74 processors, featuring two 1,024KB Level-2 Caches, 1,000MHz hypertransport.
Microsoft releases the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system to volume license customers, which are mostly corporations. The release, which comes roughly five years after the company’s last major release, Windows XP, is two years behind schedule. Not only does the release come later than expected, it is riddled with bugs and Microsoft will require another two months to release a consumer version. Visit the system’s official website.
2007
Amazon.com Inc, launches Askville.com, a website where users can ask questions to be answered by other users similar to AnswerBank and Yahoo Answers. The site has been in beta testing since December 2006 and has already been open to a few users, Amazon said.
Dell reports having shipped over forty thousand computers with the Ubuntu operating system pre-installed since Dell began offering them on May 24, 2007.
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