1882
American electrical engineer Thomas Alva Edison supplies electricity to the first customers of the Edison Electrical Illuminating Company at 257 Pearl Street in New York City. Edison inaugurates its operation by pulling a switch on the Wall Street office of his primary financial backer. The station’s “Jumbo No. 1″ generator is a direct-current steam-powered dynamo. It can power about seven hundred sixteen candlepower lamps. Within fourteen months, this first power station serves 508 subscribers and powers 12,732 bulbs.
The New York Times becomes the first newspaper to use the electricity generated by the Edison Illuminating Company. The electricity is used to power twenty-seven lamps in the editorial room and twenty-five lamps in the counting room. The following day, the paper will run an article reporting that its employees unanimously prefer the light provided by the carbon-filament lamp over the building’s former gas lighting system.
1888
George Eastman registers the Kodak trademark and receives a patent for his camera which uses roll film. (US No. 388,850) This design is the first Kodak mass-produced camera, and it will largely be responsible for popularizing photography in the mass market. As described in its advertising, the device is simple to operate. “Pull the String, Turn the Key, Press the Button.”
1906
Robert Eugene Turner of Norfolk, Virginia is granted a patent for his typewriter, described as a “Type Writing Machine,” with a carriage powered by a motor to “return automatically when the end of the writing-line is reached, also to return same by pressing a key-lever on the keyboard to return the carriage at any point of its stroke.” The machine spaces lines by manual or automatic means. (US No. 830,115) A low-powered motor was adapted to feed the carriage in the printing direction, a high-powered motor for returning the carriage in the reverse direction, and the necessary mechanism to control their action.
1951
A speech given by United States President Harry S. Truman from the opening session of the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco, California becomes the first live transcontinental broadcast. The message is carried coast-to-coast by ninety-four television stations over an infrastructure built by AT&T. From San Francisco to Chicago, the broadcast is relayed by microwave to television stations, but from Chicago to New York, it transmitted via coaxial cable, marking the first great success of cable television. With an estimated thirty million viewers, it is the single largest television audience to date.
1953
Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman publish their discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in an article entitled, “Occurring Periods of Eye Motility, and Concomitant Phenomena, during Sleep” in the journal Science. REM is the normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes, low muscle tone and a rapid, and low voltage EEG.
The science fiction film Project Moonbase directed by Richard Talmadge and starring Donna Martell, Hayden Rorke, Ross Ford, Larry Johns, Herb Jacobs, Barbara Morrison, and Ernestine Barrier, is released to US theaters. It is based on a story by Robert A. Heinlein. The film is unusual for its attempting to portray space-travel in a quasi-realistic manner and for depicting a future in which women hold positions of authority and responsibility equal to men. Watch the entire movie online at Google Video. IMDB listing Run Time: 1 hr 3 mins
1955
BBC Television News broadcasts its first newscast with an in-vision newsreader, Kenneth Kendall.
1956
The IBM RAMAC 305, the first commercial computer to use magnetic disk storage, is introduced. RAMAC stands for “Random Access Method of Accounting and Control.” It was design to replace the punch card tub file used by most business systems of the time. The 350 stores about 4.4MB, with five million 7-bit (6-bits plus 1 odd parity bit) characters. To do so, it features fifty 24 inch diameter disks with one hundred recording surfaces. Each surface has one hundred tracks. The disks spin at 1200RPM. The system’s data transfer rate is eight thousand eight hundred characters per second. Two independent access arms retrieve the required disk and select a recording track, using a servo control. The IBM RAMAC 305 system with 350 storage disks will lease for US$3,200 a month.
1957
The Ford Motor Company introduces the Edsel amidst a considerable amount of publicity on “E Day.”
1964
NASA launches the first its six Orbital Geophysical Observatory (OGO-1). The satellites will study the relationship between the Earth and the Sun.
1973
Gary W. Boone receives a patent for the first single-chip microprocessor architecture, which he describes as a “Computing Systems CPU.” (US No. 3,757,306)
1976
The Gen Con West game fair is held September 4 – 6 at McCabe Hall in San Jose, California.
1984
Infocom publishes Release 18 of the interactive fiction computer game Zork II for personal computers. It is Infocom’s second game and a sequel to its first game, Zork I.
1986
Infocom publishes Release 18 of the interactive fiction computer game Sorcerer for personal computers. It is the second game in the magic-themed “Enchanter trilogy.”
Infocom publishes Release 87 of the interactive fiction computer game Spellbreaker for personal computers. It is the third game in the “Enchanter Trilogy.”
1989
Thom Henderson, chairman of the International FidoNet Association, announces a network-wide referendum in which FidoNet sysops will be asked to vote on whether or not to be pass control of FidoNet to the IFNA.
1991
Sun Microsystems announces that it is developing a version of its Solaris operating system for Intel-based personal computers. Visit the system’s website.
1992
The first major demo archive on the Internet, “Internet Demo Site,” which will later be renamed the Hornet Archive, first goes online at ftp.uwp.edu, on the servers of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Unlike the many popular BBS archives available online, the Internet Demo Site will only host material intended for the “demoscene.” Demos are non-interactive multimedia presentations showcasing the programming, music, drawing, and 3D modeling skills of a Demogroup. Animated demonstrations are computed in real time, making computing power considerations the true challenge of creating a demo. Demos are mostly composed of 3D animations mixed with 2D effects. In 1994, the archive will be moved to the hornet.eng.ufl.edu at the University of Florida, which is where it will pick up the name Hornet Archive. The archive will host over sixteen thousand files totaling over seven seven gigabytes, most of which will be intended for the DOS platform, between 1987 and 1998.
1994
The Autumn European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) is held September 4 – 6 at the Business Design Centre in London, England. Approximately 6,924 people attend the event.
Jaleco releases the side-scrolling strategy game King Arthur’s World for the Super NES in the US.
1999
The website of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is anonymously hacked. The site is altered so that visitors are redirected to Hatewatch.org, a prominent bigotry-monitoring site. The redirect will remain in place for nearly a week. The Hatewatch organization had recently been cited as being critical of just such “hacktivism,” making this incident as embarrassing to organization as to the KKK. The founder of Hatewatch.org, David Goldman, will say in a statement to the press that, “Hatewatch has not nor ever will condone such behavior. Not only is this type of action illegal but it has the effect of calling into question the legitimacy of the online civil rights movement as a whole.” The incident will achieve notoriety when Wired Magazine wrote about it in an article entitled, “Ku Klux Klan Korrected” published on September 10. Read the Wired Magazine article online.
2000
BBC Books publishes the Dr. Who novel Festival of Death as a paperback. (ISBN-10: 0563538031) Length: 280 pages
2001
The Walt Disney Company announces that it will close its Chicago DisneyQuest location and ceases new plans for new locations pending a thorough review of its business model. According to Disney’s web site, “DisneyQuest is an Indoor Interactive Theme Park, combining cutting-edge entertainment technologies such as virtual reality and 3-D…” The park is comprised of five floors with over 250 attractions, rides, and games. The company had once stated plans to open up to twenty locations at a cost of nearly US$30 million each, but the hefty US$30 admission has kept the attraction’s attendance down.
2002
In Los Angeles, California, Microsoft introduces Windows Media 9 Series digital media software.
Infoconomy publishes an article in which legendary hacker Kevin Mitnick describes the dangers that social engineering pose to large corporations. The article quotes Mitnick as admonishing companies that, “A lot of people think they are not gullible, that they can’t be manipulated, but nothing could be further from the truth.” Read an archived copy of the brief article.
2003
The Secret Weapons expansion pack is released for the first person shooter Battlefield 1942. Visit the game’s official website.
2006
At the Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (IFA) in Berlin, Germany, local authorities raid the SanDisk booth and seize all of the MP3 players on display to enforce a court injunction enforcing a Sisvel patent on the MP3 format. On September 8th, the injunction will be over-turned and the MP3 players will be put back on display.
EA Games releases the simulation game The Sims 2: Open for Business for the Mac OS X. ESRB: T (Teen)
The September 4 issue of Business Week includes an image of a teen boy with a Nintendo Game Boy Advance as an example of a “maturiteen.” The article says about the maturiteen, “This guy is more savvy, responsible, mature, and pragmatic than previous cohorts. Culture watchers attribute his poise to baby boomer parents who treated their kids as equals. He’s a technology master, so he’s adept at online research and often acts as an in-house shopping consultant. These boys never knew a time without the Web, and its interactivity has nurtured in them a radical view of brands. They own them. Adidas, Sony, and Unilever are especially skillful at playing along.” The article follows shopping trends. Read the article online.
The ShareReactor site, a popular index for eDonkey network files, reopens under new management after a raid by Swiss police on March 10, 2004 shut it down. Prior to reopening, an email was sent to all ShareReactor users announcing that the site would be coming back online. When ShareReactor comes back online, the site has a new design and features better readings on sources in the eDonkey network. Simon Moon, who ran the site from 2002 until it went offline will have nothing to do with the future site.
2007
Ace Hardcover publishes the fantasy anthology Many Bloody Returns edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner as a hardcover. (ISBN-13: 978-0441015221) The collection is notable for including the short story “It’s My Birthday Too” by Jim Butcher, which is part of the immensely popular series The Dresden Files. Length: 368 pages
Electronic Arts releases the first-person shooter (FPS) Medal of Honor: Airborne for personal computer and the Xbox 360 in North America. Its the eleventh installment of the Medal of Honor franchise. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: T (Teen)
Yahoo! announces the acquisition of the BlueLithium internet advertising network.
|
|
|
