In 1941 – Electric eye detectors were first used to measure high-jumping height attained. A track meet of the Schenectady, NY, Patrolmen’s Association used equipment designed by General Electric, comprising of a movable light source and four electric eyes.

In 1943 – Chief consultant John Mauchly and chief engineer John Presper Eckert began leading the military commission on the new computer ENIAC. They would take one year to design the computer and 18 months to build it.

In 2006 – Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay website and shut it down. The site relaunched from servers outside Sweden.

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In 1966- NASA launched Surveyor 1. It achieved the first soft landing on the Moon by the United States. and demonstrated the technology necessary to achieve landing and operations on the lunar surface for the manned missions to follow.

In 1979 – IRM was founded in Japan with the purpose of selling electric applied game machines. Two years later they started a software division called Japan Capsule Computer. They eventually spun that division off as Capcom.

In 1987 – North American Philips Company introduced the compact disc video (CD-V), a 12 cm (4-3/4 inch) CD-sized implementation of storage for full motion video and CD-audio.

In 1996 – Intel planned to announce a video phone. Frank Gill, executive vice president of Intel’s Internet Communications Group, said he expected hundreds of thousands of video-phone ready computers would be sold that year. POssibly. But video phones didn’t take off then.

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

In 1935 – Workers poured the last concrete at the iconic Hoover Dam hydroelectric site. Four months later after the concrete was well and truly set, President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the dam.

In 1992 – John Sculley introduced the Apple Newton at CES. The first one unveiled on stage had dead batteries and didn’t work.

In 1999 – Space Shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.

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