1486
The first copyright in history is granted in Venice, Italy.
1804
One of the largest asteroid belts in the solar system, Juno, is discovered by German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding.
1858
The first transatlantic cable fails after less than one month of service.
1859
A solar flare is observed for the first time by astronomer Richard C. Carrington, who will write about his discover in Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1960. “While engaged in the … observation of … solar spots … two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out. … I therefore noted down the time, … and seeing the outburst to be very rapidly on the increase … I hastily ran to call some one to witness … and on returning within 60 seconds, was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled. Very shortly afterwards the last trace was gone. In this lapse of 5 minutes, the two patches of light traversed a space of about 35,000 miles.”
1865
Joseph Lister performs the first antiseptic surgery in history.
1881
In an address to the British Association, at York, Sir William Thomson, the first Baron Kelvin, describes the sources of all energy in nature available to man for the production of mechanical effect, as the tides, food, fuel, wind, and rain. He credits all of these sources, except the tides, as being derived from the sun. This is the beginning of the science of thermodynamics.
1902
The black and white silent film A Trip to the Moon, which will be considered one of the first science fiction films ever, is released in France as Le Voyage dans la Lune. It’s loosely based on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells. In it, a group of men travel to the moon by being shot in a capsule from a giant cannon. They are captured by moon-men, escape, and return to the earth. IMDB listing
1939
First Cannes Film Festival is held September 1-20 as as a less politicized rival to the Mostra in Venice. However, the event will prove to be only more highly political than it’s competitors.
The Physical Review publishes the first scientific journal to address the astronomical phenomena of Black Holes.
1940
Experimental television broadcasters in the US are allowed to seek program sponsors for the first time.
1961
The Soviet Union ends its moratorium on atomic bomb testing with an above-ground nuclear explosion in central Asia. By September 5, it will have conducted three nuclear weapons tests above ground. In response, US President Kennedy will order the resumption of underground weapons testing by the US, beginning on September 15, 1961. On August 5, 1963, the testing will end when the Limited Test Ban Treaty is signed in Moscow, prohibiting testing in outer space, underwater, or in the atmosphere.
1962
The United Nations announces that the population of Earth has reached three billion.
1966
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Canada begins regularly broadcasting experimental color television programming. About thirty hours of color programming is broadcast each week on the English-language service, most of which is s is acquired programming, while the French-language service broadcasts fifteen hours of color programming a week, most of which is original.
Ralph Baer begins developing an idea for a game played using a standard home television monitor, writing a four-page description of the idea. Within days, he will produce schematic drawings of a two-player block chase game. In 2006, he will be awarded the National Medal of Technology for inventing the home console for video games and spawning the video game industry.
1969
The first Interface Message Processor (IMP), built by BBN, is installed by Leonard Kleinrock and his group at UCLA. October 2nd, it will be connected to the University’s SDS Sigma-7 mainframe, and on October 29th, the IMP will be used to send the world’s first long-distance host-to-host communication.
1972
In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky to become the first American world chess champion.
1974
The SR-71 Blackbird strategic reconnaissance aircraft sets the record for the fastest flight between from New York and London, after making the trip in just 1 hour 54 minutes 56.4 seconds.
1977
The first TRS-80 Model I computer is sold.
1979
The American space probe Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes within 21,000 miles of the planet.
1981
RFC 791 which defines Internetwork Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is released. Read it online.
1982
Developers declare the Apple Lisa ready for market.
1988
Nintendo releases the platform game Super Mario Bros. 2 for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the US.
1989
Grid Systems ships the Grid MXV-01 CD-ROM drive for the Grid 1500 series laptop computer, featuring the first CD-ROM drive designed for a battery-powered laptop computer.
1991
Nintendo releases the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) video game console in North America. The system features a custom 5A22 processor with a 16-bit 65c816 core, 128KB RAM, 64KB SRAM, and 128KB DRAM. It will go on to become the best-selling system of its day, selling over 61.91 million units globally. Price: US$200
1992
Twenty years to the day after becoming the first American world chess champion, Bobby Fischer emerges from retirement to hold a press conference. From Yugoslavia, he spits on an order issued by the United States Treasury Department warning him that playing chess in the country would be a violation of United Nations sanctions. In defiance of the sanction, Fischer announces that he will play his one-time rival, Boris Spassky, in a five million dollar chess match in Sveti Stefan, Yugoslavia. The match will begin September 30 and run through November 11. Fischer will win the match.
Toshiba introduces the Satellite as a new value-line notebook computer.
1994
The United States Library of Congress holds the first meeting to plan the conversion of printed materials to a digital format in order to make them accessible through the internet and to preserve rare materials. During the initial meeting, librarians and technical experts project that the library’s most vulnerable materials might be digitized as soon as by the year 2000.
1996
Apple Computer, Inc. and Bandai release the Apple Pippin multimedia player platform in the US, featuring a 66MHz PowerPC 603e processor, 128K SRAM, a 14.4 kbit/s modem, 4x CD-ROM drive, and ran a cut-down version of the Mac OS. The system will ultimately prove to be a failure, because the Sony PlayStation, and Sega Saturn, both of which are much more powerful than Pippin with a wider range of software, already dominate the market. Read more about the system.
1997
The discovery of a new sub-atomic particle was announced, called the “exotic meson.” Scientists speculate that the exotic meson might be comprised of four quarks, unlike all other known particles, which have three. The research team included physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, and other facilities in the US and Russia.
1998
International Business Machines (IBM) announces the shipment of the world’s first copper-based microprocessors, including a PowerPC 740/750 operating at 400MHz. Copper technologies represent a significant improvement over traditional aluminum technologies. The company also announced several other initiatives associated with copper, including the availability of the fastest embedded processor on the market, a 400MHz embedded PowerPC chip.
Network Associates Inc. (NAI) releases version 6.0 of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption application as freeware for Windows and Mac computers.
1999
An explosive device is detonated at about 8pm in a video game arcade of an upscale shopping mall near the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. The amusement center is located in the lowest level of the three-story Manezh Square underground shopping center. Almost forty people are hurt and one will die from their injuries.
Gateway, Inc. announces that Jim Collas, president of its Amiga subsidiary, has resigned. Gateway replaces Collas with Tom Schmidt, previously Amiga’s Chief Operating Officer (COO).
The last of thirteen episodes of the science fiction series Crusade, “Each Night I Dream of Home,” airs on the TNT cable network. (No. 13) Crusade is a spin-off of Babylon 5 set in 2267AD, several years after the events in Babylon 5. In the series, a race called the Drakh have released a nanovirus plague on Earth, which will destroy all life on Earth within five years unless its stopped. To that end, the destroyer class ship Excalibur has been sent on a mission to seek out anything that could offer a cure. The series was canceled before it even premiered due to creative differences between the series creator, J. Michael Straczynski, and the network. TV.com Entry
Next Generation Online reports that Nintendo has released information regarding the Game Boy Advance (GBA). This new generation of handheld game systems will use a 32-bit Reduced Instruction Set Chip (RISC) Central Processing Unit (CPU) which was developed by ARM. Other features include a twenty-hour battery life, the ability to connect with cellular phones for Internet access, and a digital camera accessory. The targeted release date for Japan is August 2000.
2000
Apple Computer begins shipping the new iMac computer, featuring a 350MHz PowerPC G3 processor. It is available with an indigo blue case. Price: US$1,199
Dimension Films releases the fantasy film Highlander: Endgame, directed by Douglas Aarniokoski and starring Adrian Paul, Christopher Lambert, and Bruce Payne, to 1,543 US theaters. It is the fourth film in the Highlander franchise. Produced on a budget of US$25 million, the film will gross US$5,067,331 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 1 hr 28 min.
UbiSoft releases the platform game Rayman 2: The Great Escape for the Game Boy Color, Nintendo 64, personal computers, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and Sega Dreamcast. The game is notable in that it raises the standard for 3D game graphics, it deviates from the stock platformer storyline, and it allows players to go back to earlier levels of the game to finish certain tasks.
2004
Acclaim files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with the US Bankruptcy Court of New York, which will virtually destroy the company in liquidating all possible assets to pay off their enormous debt which reportedly tops USD$100 million.
The IBM System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) mainframe processor begins its first commercial production workload, at an undisclosed Midwestern US insurance company, performing claims processing. zAAP engines are dedicated to running Java workloads under z/OS, accelerating performance. The zAAP is not the first processor technology dedicated to a specific programming language or even to Java. Other Java processors include aJile Systems’ aJ-100 and Sun’s picoJava. However, zAAP is the first system to perform large-scale commercial Java processing. Visit the system’s official website.
iTunes sales exceeds 125 million songs.
Nokia announces that it has shipped one million N-Game video game systems worldwide to date.
2005
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Missouri, rules that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act disallows altering video games published by Blizzard to link with servers other than the company’s official Battle.net site.
2006
The Japanese anime film Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society, directed by Kenji Kamiyama and starring Atsuko Tanaka, Akio Otsuka, Koichi Yamadera, Osamu Saka, Yutaka Nakano, Toru Okawa, Takashi Onozuka, and Taro Yamaguchi premieres in Japan on the Animax satellite television network on a pay-per-view basis. It’s based on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series. IMDB listing Running Time: 1 hr 22 mins
Luxembourg closes down analogue television transmissions in favor of digital terrestrial television (DTT), becoming the first country to complete the move to all digital broadcasting.
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