In 1847 – The London and North Western Railway along with the Caledonian Railway adopted London Time on instructions from the General Post Office. Other railways followed suit and this was seen as the establishment of the first time zone.

In 1913 – Henry Ford added the moving-chassis assembly line to produce Model T’s in his Highland Park, Michigan factory. It was the crowning glory in his attempts to increase efficiency and production.

1977 – Time Warner launched QUBE in Columbus, Ohio, the first two-way interactive cable system. One of its channels called “The Pinwheel” would later be relaunched as Nickelodeon.

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In 1934 – The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman became the first to officially exceed 100 mph.

In 1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merged to form BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world. Marconi had been founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897.

In 2006 – Microsoft released Windows Vista for business use. Vista improved on security over Windows XP, but took criticism for other features, and never rivaled Windows XP in adoption.

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In 1777 – The Spanish founded California’s first civilian settlement called Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. It would become the future state’s first capital and eventually the heart of Silicon Valley.

In 1910 – The first US patent for a traffic signal system was issued to Ernest E. Sirrine. It switched an illuminated sign between the words “stop” and “proceed”

In 1972 – Nolan Bushnell installed a coin-operated arcade game at Andy Capp’s tavern in Sunnyvale, California. It only played Allan Alcorn’s Pong. Within four months there were 10,000 across the country.

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In 1660 – 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray met after Wren’s astronomy lecture to discuss the formal constitution of a society of philosophers that would become The Royal Society. It still exists and recently opened its archives on the Web.

In 1814 – For the first time, an automatic steam-powered press printed The Times in London. German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer built the press. The Times quickly pointed out that they would not layoff workers, but instead increase printing, bringing the paper to a wider audience.

In 1964 – NASA launched Mariner 4 toward Mars where it would conduct the first successful flyby of the red planet.

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In 1971 – The Soviet Union’s Mars 2 orbiter released its descent module which probably had too steep an angle of entry, and malfunctioned and crashed. But hey, it was still the first manmade object to reach the surface of Mars.

In 1995 – Microsoft released Internet Explorer 2.0, touting its privacy and encryption, and stepping up the browser war with Netscape.

In 2001 – Scientists announced they had used the Hubble telescope to detect and analyze the atmosphere on an extrasolar planet for the first time. The planet HD 209458 b, unofficially called Osiris was found to have sodium in its atmosphere.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.