In 1939 – In a garage in Palo Alto, California, William Hewlett and David Packard founded Hewlett-Packard a little company that made audio oscillators– and later TouchPads.

In 1983 – A new Internet and Transmission Control Protocol (Yep called IP/TCP by some at the time, weird I know) went into effect on the ARPANet, replacing the Network Control Protocol. The result was a new ARPA Internet combining ARPA hosts of the time new systems.

In 1985 – The Nordic Research Network NORDUnet registered the first domain name NORDU.NET.

MP3

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In 1923 – The chimes of Big Ben were broadcast on radio for the first time by the BBC, beginning a new year’s tradition.

In 1938 -Cops in Indianapolis put Indiana University professor Rolla Harger’s drunkometer to its first practical New Year’s Eve test as a breath analyzer. Suspected drunks blew into a balloon and the air was mixed with a chemical solution that turned darker the more alcohol was present. The more portable Breathalyzer replaced the drunkometer in 1958.

In 2001 – Microsoft provided its last day of support for Windows 95 making it officially “obsolete” according to the Microsoft Lifecycle policy, after only six years.

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In 1873 – A number of gentlemen in New York City founded the American Metrological Society, feeling that a change to the Metric System was needed by civilized nations. 100 years later they’re defunct and gallons, miles, and Fahrenheit rule the US.

In 1913 – Dr William David Coolidge received his patent for improvements in tungsten and methods for making the same for use as filaments in incandescent lights. It made light bulbs last a lot longer. Too bad that in 1928, GE got a court to declare the patent was not an invention.

In 1924 – Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced that he had found stars in the spiral nebula Andromeda, and using Leavitt’s formula measured them as 860,000 light years away proving Andromeda was a separate galaxy. He would go on to find a dozen more galaxies.

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In 1949 – TV station KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut became the first ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.

In 1952 – The first hearing aid using a junction transistor went on sale, the model 1010 manufactured by the Sonotone Corporation in Elmsford, New York, U.S.

In 1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gave a talk called “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, in which he suggested it should be possible to make nanoscale machines that can arrange atoms the way we want.

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In 1886 – Josephine Garis Cochrane of Shelbyville, Illinois received the first U.S. patent for a commercially successful dishwasher. Dishes fit in compartments in a wheel that turned inside a copper boiler. Her company eventually became KitchenAid.

In 1895 – The first commercial presentation of the famous Lumière Cinématographe took place at the Salon Indien of the Grand Café in Paris. Invited payees got to see ten films.

In 2005 – The European Space Agency and the Galileo Joint launched GIOVE-A the first test-bed satellite for the Galileo geo-location system.

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