In 1878 – The first commercial telephone exchange in the U.S. was installed at New Haven, Connecticut, and served 21 subscribers connected by a single strand of iron wire. Only two conversations could be handled simultaneously and six connections had to be made for each call.

In 1960 – The Communications Moon Relay System was inaugurated publicly when a facsimile picture of the USS Hancock was transmitted wirelessly by radio wave to Washington DC, by being bounced off the moon.

In 2001 – The Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants faced off in Tampa Bay, Florida, for Super Bowl XXXV, and facial-recognition surveillance cameras pointed at tens of thousands of fans entering the game. It found 12 false positives.

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In 1948 – IBM dedicated its “SSEC” in New York City. The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator handled both data and instructions using electronic circuits made with 13,500 vacuum tubes and 21,000 relays.

In 1967 – The first US astronauts died in the line of duty. Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed on the launch pad when a flash fire engulfed their command module during testing for the first Apollo-Saturn mission.

In 2006 – The end of an era. Western Union discontinued its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. The company still handles money transfers.

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In 1932 – the US Patent Office received a patent application for the cyclotron by Ernest Orlando Lawrence as a “Method and Apparatus for the Acceleration of Ions.”

In 1949 – The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory saw first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope. Hubble photographed Hubble’s Variable Nebula (NGC 2261).

In 1983 – Lotus begins selling its spreadsheet application for Microsoft DOS, called 1-2-3. It would quickly become the most popular spreadsheet software but not make the transition to Windows well and fall behind Excel permanently.

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In 1881 – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company in agreement with the Anglo-Indian Telephone Company Ltd.. The company was licensed to sell telephones in Greece, Turkey, South Africa, India, Japan, China and several other Asian countries.

In 1915 – AT&T inaugurated transcontinental telephone service with a call made between New York City and San Francisco, Cal. The line had been completed the previous summer too early for the Panama Pacific Exposition.

In 1921 – A play called Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) by Karel Capek debuted at the National Theater in Prague. It was the first appearance of the word robot. Spoiler alert, the robots end up killing all the humans but one.

In 1979 – Robert Williams was killed on the job in a Flat Rock, Michigan, casting plant, becoming the first recorded human death by robot.

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In 1935 – Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer went on sale in Richmond, Virginia in cans, developed by the American Can Company. Cans protected beer better than translucent bottles.

In 1950 – Percy LeBaron Spencer received a patent for a “Method of Treating Foodstuffs” which we would recognise as the Microwave Oven.

In 1984 – The original Macintosh was introduced becoming the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface rather than a command line interface.

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