1847
Maria Mitchell becomes the first female astronomer in the United States to discover a comet. From her homemade observatory in Nantucket, Massachusetts, she discovered a star five degrees above the North Star where one hadn’t been previously located. After several nights of observation, she realized that the light was moving, and theorized that it must be a comet. For her discovery, she will be awarded a gold medal by the king of Denmark. She will also become the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1878
Emma M. Nutt begins work Telephone Dispatch Company in Boston, Massachusetts, becoming the nation’s first female telephone operator. Nutt, who would remain an operate for thirty-three year, was hired in the hope of addressing customer complaints that many of the male operators were rude and surly.
1880
In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison Lamp Works, the first electric lamp factory, produces its first commercial electric light bulbs. Opened by Thomas Edison, more than 130,000 bulbs will be manufactured by the time the plant is relocated to Harrison, New Jersey on April 1, 1882.
1891
In California, Stanford University opens.
1908
The Ford Motor Company introduces the Model T, better known as the “tin Lizzy,” in America. The Ford Model T is the first car to be made on an assembly line, an it will become an instant sensation. It will initially be sold for US$850, but as production volumes rise, the price of the vehicles will decline. By 1925, a Coupe will sell for US$525 new, while a two-door Runabout went for only US$260.
1918
Lucien Lévy takes out his second patent on superheterodyne transmission, a technique whereby radios can selectively recover waves of a particular frequency.
1919
The United States Government lifts the restriction on amateur and experimental wireless transmissions. The licenses had been canceled April 17, 1917, the day after it entered into World War I.
1949
The first practical rectangular television tubes are delivered in the US. The tubes are manufactured by the Kimble Glass Co., a subsidiary of Owens-Illinois, and sell for about US$12. The display face of the tube measures approximately 12 inches by 16 inches.
1950
First publicly broadcast live television transmissions from an aircraft are broadcast by a BBC camera on board a Bristol Freighter. The broadcast shows aerial views from 1,250ft above central London, as well as other aircraft in flight.
1952
KPTV in Portland, Oregon begins regularly broadcasting, becoming the first US television station in the ultra high frequency UHF band.
1953
Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) is listed for the first time by the New York Stock Exchange with the symbol of TXN when it merges with the Intercontinental Rubber Company. Stocks opened at US$5.25. The first one hundred shares are issued to John Erik Jonsson, the co-founder of TI.
1954
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announces the 705 EDP mainframe computer, which features a magnetic core memory.
1958
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is founded to manage the space exploration program in response the launch of the Russian artificial satellite Sputnik, to replace National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The move is made in response to considerable pressure from the Department of Defense, in response to Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite.
1964
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) is launched on the campus of University of California, Berkeley. The FSM is a student protest during which students insist that the university administration lift a ban on on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students’ right to free speech and academic freedom.
1968
The horror film Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A. Romero, premieres at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The film, which will become a cult classic years later, earns its notoriety for shocking audiences of young children across the nation during matinees which had typically featured campy B-movies at a time well before any movie rating system had yet been established. Produced on a budget of US$114,000, the film will gross US$12 million domestically and US$30 million internationally by the end of a decade of re-releases. IMDb entry
1969
The ARPANET’s second node is set up at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and connected to their SDS 940, creating a two node network. The third interface message processor (IMP) is installed at UC Santa Barbara and the fourth is installed at the University of Utah. Running Telnet and linked by dedicated telephone lines, the IMPS allow users to log on to remote computers to run applications. The first ARPANET message exchanged over the network is the word “LOG-IN,” but on the letter “G,” the network crashes.
1971
The Walt Disney World amusement theme park opens in Orlando, Florida. The park will become one of the world’s largest tourist attraction.
1973
Kee Games, an arcade game manufacturer and whooly own subsidiary of Atari, Inc., first use their new logo.
1976
Harry Margolis, Robert Dunnett, and Ondrej Kojnok formally incorporate IMSAI Manufacturing Corporation, manufacturer of the UMSAI 8080.
1979
Four ex-Atari, Inc. game designers, David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead team up with Jim Levy formerly of Time, Inc., Hershey Foods, and GRT Music, to form Activision for the purpose of producing game cartridges for the Atari 2600 game system with a start-up investment of US$700,000. Before the company’s founding, all games were published exclusively by each console’s manufacturer. The concept of founding the company evolved from the four programmers’ irritation at never being credited or rewarded for the creation of games that went on to become multi-million dollar sensations. As the first independent video game software company in the world, Activision will introduce the concept of designer notoriety by crediting individual developers on game packaging. The company’s first releases will be Boxing, Checkers, Dragster, and Fishing Derby, all of which will be released in 1980. All four game will be hits, and the company’s seventy million dollars of revenue in its first year will be a very public humiliation for Atari. Visit the company’s official website.
1980
Patrick Eugene Haggerty, the former chairman of Texas Instruments (TI) passes away.
1981
Atari, Inc. hosts distributor luncheon meetings Thursday, October 1, and Friday, October 2 in the New York – New Jersey area to officially introduce Tempest featuring Atari’s newly developed QuadraScan Color Display system and Skill-Step feature.
1982
According to Twin Galaxies, Shawn Dybdahl, age 16, scores a record-setting 285,300 points on Kangaroo by Atari Inc. after playing the game for one hour and forty-six minutes at the Tilt Arcade in Las Vegas, Nevada. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.
EPCOT Center opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States.
Sony launches the first consumer compact disc (CD) player (model CDP-101) in Japan. At the time of its release, 113 albums are available on compact disc. Even at prices ranging from US$700 to US$1,000, Sony will report selling over twenty thousand units by year’s end, and the company won’t be able to meet the demand for disks, which sell for fifteen to twenty dollars dollars.
1983
Nolan K. Bushnell’s non-competition agreement with Atari, Inc. expires.
1984
The Isle-Net bulletin board system (BBS), based in Staten Island, New York, goes online. It is one of the very first subscription-based BBS communities, and it will become widely known for its adult content, through many books and magazine articles written about the emerging BBS culture.
Merchandising Corporation of America, an MCA controlled company, files suit in San Jose Superior Court against Warner Communications, Inc. for unpaid royalties related to Atari’s use of E.T., the Extraterrestrial, The Last Starfighter, The A-Team, and Dune for an unpaid balance of US$14 million.
1985
AT&T and Knight-Ridder launch the Viewtron national videotex service for personal computers. Viewtron is an interactive data service largely devoted to delivering news from Knight-Ridder newspapers offering such ecommerce services as airline schedules and online banking that will expand into fifteen cities Price: US$9.95.
1992
Chess legend Bobby Fischer emerges from twenty years of seclusion to announce in a press conference in Yugoslavia to announce that he would compete in a match with his rival, Borris Spassky, for a five million dollar prize in defiance of United Nation sanctions brought against him.
The Midway Manufacturing Company introduces Mortal Kombat at the Amusement and Music Operators Association Expo in Nashville, Tennessee. The coin-op game was originally conceived to to feature Jean-Claude Van Damme, but when he declined, the developers recruited an entire team of martial artists from a local athletic club. The characters became Johnny Cage, Liu Kang, Scorpion, Sub-Zero. Raiden, Kano and Kurtis Stryker. In focus groups, however, player’s expressed a strong interest in seeing a female fighter, so Stryker was scrapped in favor of Sonya Blade, who was modeled after an aerobics instructor.
Turner Broadcasting launches a cable channel with twenty-four hour animated programming called the Cartoon Network in the United States. The channel’s first aired programming is the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon Rhapsody Rabbit. Visit the official Cartoon Network website.
1993
Panasonic releases the FZ-1 REAL 3DO Interactive Multiplayer game system in the US, featuring a 12.5 MHz 32-bit microprocessor, 3MB RAM, 16 million colors, a double speed CD-ROM drive, up to eight controllers, and audio CD playback. It is the very first game system to rely only on Compact Disc (CD) technology as it’s software medium. The systems are manufactured by Matsushita in Japan and comes bundled with Crash ‘n Burn by Crystal Dynamics. Price: US$699.95
1995
DAW Books publishes the fantasy novel Crown of Shadows by C. S. Friedman as a hardcover. (ISBN 0-88677-664-3) It is the third book in the Coldfire Trilogy. Length: 448 pages
Microsoft offers more than thirty titles from their Home software library for under US$50 each.
1996
Cellnet, Compaq, DeTeMobil, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Mannesmann, Microsoft, Nokia, Telia, Toshiba, and Vodata unite to form the Mobile Data Initiative.
Lucent becomes an independent company, separate from its former parent company, AT&T Inc..
Yahoo! traffic reaches one billion page views.
1998
British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) launches Sky Digital, a subscription television service in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. It produces TV content, and owns several TV channels. More than a third of the equity is owned by News Corporation, an American and Australian company chaired by Rupert Murdoch, who also acts as Chairman of BSkyB.
Global Crossing announces the Pan European Crossing (PEC), a fiber optic network directly linking eighteen European cities with the United States, Asia, and Latin America.
Internet traffic measurement company Media Metrix merges with its largest rival, Relevant Knowledge.
Nihon Keizai Shimbun, one of the largest media corporations in Japan, runs a story entitled, “Sega To Market Game System With Internet Functions.” The story reveals Sega’s to develop the forthcoming Dreamcast system so that it supports a number of Internet functions for purchasing and downloading games directly from Sega’s website. While Sega claims that the plan is cutting edge, many believe the plan is only preparation for a future inability to rely on traditional retail channels to support their new system.
1999
Researchers at Brandeis University unveils a 6½ foot span of Lego building blocks that was built by a computer based on the true physical attributes of the toy blocks. It took a day and a half for the computer to complete the bridge. When the plans were completed, Professor Jordan Pollack built the bridge and found that it was structurally sound.
University of California Berkeley officials reveal plans to issue cease-and-desist warnings to companies that post lecture notes on the Internet. According to administrators, one such letter sent to www.versity.com includes a threat to discipline students working for such companies.
2001
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases the 1.1GHz Duron processor. Price: US$103 in 1000-unit quantity
Apple Computer releases a new iMac computer to retail outlets, featuring 64MB memory and a CD-ROM drive. Price: US$799
Intel releases the 733 MHz Mobile Celeron processor based on the P6 microarchitecture, featuring a 128KB Level-2 Cache and a 133MHz Front Side Bus.
Little, Brown & co. (U.K.), Random House (Canada), and Viking Adult (United States) publish the fantasy novel Bitten by Kelley Armstrong as a hardcover. (ISBN 978-0670894710) The book is the first in the Women of the Otherworld series. Visit this author’s official website. Length: 400 pages
Wizards of the Coast publishes the tabletop gaming manual for the The Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game as a hardcover. (ISBN-13: 978-0786919963) Length: 320 pages
2005
H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society releases the horror film The Call of Cthulhu, directed by Andrew Leman, to DVD in the US. It is a black-and-white silent film adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name, made to appear as if it had been made in 1926, in the year that Lovecraft wrote the story. Visit the film’s official website. IMDB listing Running Time: 47 mins
2006
Nathan Peterson, administrator of the iBackups website, is sentenced in an Alexandria, Virginia District Court to more than seven years in prison and enormous fines, setting a record of the longest sentence ever passed down on charges of software piracy, which have typically averaged twenty-two months. iBackups was an ecommerce service that sold bootleg copies of popular software for backup purposes to anyone claiming to own a legitimate copy of the software.
2007
Lego releases an Ultimate Collector Series edition Millennium Falcon set. With 5,195 pieces the set is the largest (and most expensive) that Lego has ever released. Visit the set’s official website. Price: US$499.99
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