In 1886 – Karl Benz drove his Patent Motor Wagen on Mannheim’s Ringstraße, reaching a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph) powered by a 0.75-hp one-cylinder four-stroke gasoline engine. It was the first public drive of what is considered the first purpose-built automobile.

In 1998 – Danielle Bunten Berry died of lung cancer. She was a pioneering game designer most famous for creating the multiplayer game M.U.L.E. in 1983.

In 1999 – At the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, Billy Mitchell became the first ever to achieve a perfect score on Pac-Man.

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In 1897 – 23-year-old Guglielmo Marconi received a patent in England for his wireless telegraphy which we now call radio. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. Ltd. was formed a few weeks later.

In 1928 W3XK, owned by the Jenkins Television Corporation, went on the air becoming the first television broadcasting station in the US.

In 2001 – Bram Cohen first revealed BitTorrent on a Yahoo group called decentralization.

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In 1979 – Sony introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2. It weighed 14 ounces, was blue and silver, and had a second earphone jack. It was originally marketed in the US as the Sound-About and in the UK as the Stowaway.

In 1991 – Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call over a privately operated network to Vice Mayor Kaarina Suonio in Tampere. The Prime Minister used Nokia gear on GSM’s original 900MHz band.

In 1984 – The book Neuromancer by William Gibson was published. The cyberpunk novel would go on to win the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards. The book is credited with popularizing the term cyberspace and laying out a blueprint for what the World Wide Web would become.

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In 1945 – The first draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was published. It discussed the advantages of using just one large internal memory, in which instructions as well as data could be held.

In 1948 – Bell Labs introduced the point-contact transistor demonstrated by its inventors, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at a press conference in Murray Hill, NJ.

In 1948 – The FCC authorisation of recording devices in connection with interstate or foreign telephone service went into effect. Users of the service had to be given adequate notice including a tone warning signal at regular intervals.

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In 1975 – Steve Wozniak built the first prototype of the Apple I, the first computer to show letters on the screen as you typed them.

In 1995 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the space station Mir, the first-ever docking of a Shuttle to a Space Station.

In 2007 – The Apple iPhone went on sale for the first time.

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