1492
The Ensisheim Meteorite, the first meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the Earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France.
1631
Pierre Gassendi first observes the transit of a planet. Johannes Kepler had predicted a transit of Mercury would occur in 1631. When Gassendi observed the dot of Mercury passing across the face of the Sun with a Galilean telescope by projecting the sun’s image on a screen of paper. He will recount the observation in Mercurius in sole visus (”Mercury in the Face of the Sun”) in 1632.
1903
Léon Gaumont screens his first sound film for the Société de Photographie in Paris, France.
1908
Professor Ernest Rutherford announces in London that he had isolated a single atom of matter.
1911
Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, in his presidential address to the Röntgen Society in London, suggests that high-definition television is possible with cathode ray tubes. The paper won’t be published until April 1924 in the magazine Wireless World.
1918
Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard demonstrates a tube-launched solid propellant rocket, using a music stand as his launching platform. Goddard began work for the Army in 1917 to design rockets to aid in the war effort. Further development led to the World War II bazooka, a small, hand-held rocket launcher.
1932
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century premieres on the radio. The show is based on two novellas published in Amazing Stories by Philip Francis Nowlan and a subsequent comic strip. Many will later claim that the Buck Rogers series is the great-grandfather of modern science fiction series, such as Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek.
1935
Royal National Institute for the Blind issues the first “talking book,” using twelve inch discs.
1946
The first US coin-operated television is publicly exhibited in New York City. It operates when a quarter is inserted, playing various test patterns and a model of Felix the Cat. The receiver, named the Tradio-Vision, contains twenty tubes and a five inch cathode ray tube that reflected a 500-line image on mirror in the lid of its metal cabinet.
1960
At the Rand Corporation, the JOSS conversational timesharing service is first implemented on the Johnniac computer. Mathematician and systems programmer Cliff Shaw developed the Johnniac Open Shop System (JOSS) in a symbolic assembly language called EasyFox, which he had also developed. The system’s purpose is to bring users back into contact with the machine to do online debugging and program development. Prior to timesharing, batch turn-around times impeded the solution of many problems as programmers submitted punch cards to computer operators and waited for their results for as long as several days.
1986
Atari makes an initial public offering. Four and a half million shares are initially sold for US$11.25 each, raising US$50.6 million. Atari pays its debts to Warner Communications and other loans of US$36.2 million with the proceeds. Read more about Atari at the Atari Museum.
1988
USA Today publishes an article on the Morris Worm as its headline story. The article describes the worm as the “worst computer virus outbreak in history”, with over 6,000 computers being affected on something called INTERnet (”a low-security computer network… which is designed to let researchers across the USA easily exchange messages by computer.”) Visit the newspaper’s official website.
1990
Z-Nix sues Microsoft for allegedly violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by exerting monopolistic control of operating system user interfaces to control the mouse pointer market. Z-Mix asks for US$4.5 million in damages.
1994
Apple Computer, International Business Machines (IBM), and Motorola announce that they will create a computer platform to run all major operating systems, except the Intel x86-based Microsoft Windows 3.1 and its successors. The Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP, pronounced “chirp”) is designed to create a common standard for future computers and to make ports of both operating systems and application software easier. Apple Computer will port the Mac OS to this platform and license other vendors to create Mac-compatible computers. IBM will port AIX and OS/2, Motorola will port Windows NT, Novell will port NetWare, SunSoft will port Solaris.
The Electrical Engineering Times runs a cover story about flaws in Intel’s Pentium computer chip. The bug, an obscure flaw that causes extremely rare computation errors when performing certain types of mathematical calculations will eventually cause Intel to replace any Pentium processor affected by the flaw. Intel will take a US$475 million charge against earnings for the quarter to cover the expense of replacing all of the chips.
1996
NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor from Cape Canaveral on mission to Mars.
1997
Touchstone Pictures releases the science fiction action film Starship Troopers, directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Dina Meyer, Jake Busey, and Neil Patrick Harris, to 2,971 US theaters. The movie is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein. Produced on a budget of US$105 million, it will gross US$22,058,773 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 2 hrs 10 mins
2000
Pets.com closes its doors and lays off eighty percent of its staff. The company blames the layoffs on “tough environment for business-to-consumer Internet companies.” In June, the online pet supplies retailer began selling sock puppets of its mascot, which quickly became the company’s best selling product.
Reuters news service breaks the story that a nineteen-year-old Dutch hacker using the handle “Dimitri” broke in to Microsoft’s internal web servers during the previous week with to demonstrate the vulnerability caused by the company not installing their own security patches. Dimitri left proof of his exploit in the form of a text file containing the message, “Hack the planet.” The intrusion had evidently gone wholly unnoticed by Microsoft personnel until the story was publicly published. The publicity generated by the story is especially damaging to Microsoft because it comes on the heels of a major intrusion widely reported on October 26 in which a Russian hacker stole Microsoft source code and Microsoft, in response, vowed “to shore up its internal security.”
Seagate Technology, a major American manufacturer of hard drives, announces that it will supply hard drives for Microsoft’s Xbox video game system. Visit Seagate’s official website.
Tor Books publishes the fantasy novel Winter’s Heart by Robert Jordan as a hardcover. (ISBN 0-312-86425-6) It is the ninth book in the Wheel of Time series. Length: 668 pages
2001
The .biz top-level domain (TLD) becomes active. intended for domains to be used by businesses. It was created to relieve some of the demand for .com domains, and it remains available to anyone, irregardless of their location. The domains are administered by Neulevel. Visit Neulevel’s official website.
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Breaking the Ice” first airs. (No. 108) In it, Malcolm and Travis seek Eisilium on a comet while T’Pol considers marriage to Koss. Memory Alpha entry
2002
In New York, Microsoft officially unveils the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system.
2003
The Star Wars Clone Wars television series premieres on the Cartoon Network. The series will run for twenty-five episodes, twenty running for approximately three minutes each and five running for approximately twelve minutes each. The films are set in the three-year time period between the films Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and strongly emphasize action rather than plot. Visit the series’ official website. TV.com
2005
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 1GHz Athlon 64 1500+ processor, featuring a 512KB Level-2 Cache.
In Hong Kong, Chan Nai-ming, age 38, is sentenced to three month in prison for uploading three films to the internet under the web handle 古惑天皇 (”Big Crook” or “Master of Cunning”), becoming the first person in the world to be successfully prosecuted for sharing files over bittorrent. The magistrate who sentenced Nai-ming prefaced his ruling by stating that, “[Intellectual properties] are real, they are valuable and they amount to genuine property. And the owners of those rights are entitled to the same level of protection from dishonest appropriation as the owners of ordinary, more tangible property.” The magistrate also stated that the sentence handed down had been reduced because it was the first of its kind but that future perpetrators could expect harsher sentences. Nai-ming was released on bail pending a December 12, 2006 appeal, in which the high court upheld the original verdict. The three films were Daredevil, Miss Congeniality, and Red Planet.
2006
Activision releases the first-person shooter Call of Duty 3 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 in the US. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)
Hewlett-Packard announced that it had completed the acquisition of Mercury Interactive, a company that produces Business Technology Optimization software, applications that help a company develop, govern, and maintain information technology.
Microsoft announces that it will offer over one thousand hours of movies and television episodes for download on the Xbox 360.
Microsoft Game Studios releases the third-person shooter Gears of War for the Xbox 360 in North America. The game centers on the soldiers of Delta Squad as they fight to save the human inhabitants of the fictional planet Sera from a relentless subterranean enemy known as the Locust Horde. It will sell over three million copies in just ten weeks, and it will go on to become the fastest-selling video game of 2006. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)
Microsoft releases the external Xbox 360 HD DVD Player. Price: US$199.99
Red Octane releases the music game Guitar Hero II for the Playstation 2 in North America. The game comes bundled with a cherry red Gibson SG controller. Like it’s predecessor, Guitar Hero, the player uses a guitar-shaped peripheral to play rock music as notes scroll towards the player. The gameplay is largely identical to that of the original, with the notable addition of several new modes and note combinations. It features covers of sixty-four playable songs recorded especially for the game, including: “Free Bird” as made famous by Lynyrd Skynyrd, “War Pigs” as made famous by Black Sabbath, and “You Really Got Me” as made famous by Van Halen. Despite being among the most expensive games ever released for the PlayStation 2 or (later) the Xbox 360, Guitar Hero II will be a critical and commercial success, selling 1.3 million copies by the end of the year. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen) Price: US$79.99 (PS2) or US$89.99 (X360)
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