In 1919 – Sir Arthur Eddington led a team in Africa to observe the total eclipse, while another team observed it in Brazil, to measure how the sun bent star light during a solar eclipse. The results confirmed Einstein’s theory of Relativity.

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.

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In 1936 – Alan Turing submitted his paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” for publication in which he postulated hypothetical Turing Machines would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm.

In 1959 – A committee of government, military and business computer experts met at the Pentagon and laid the foundations for the COBOL computer language.

In 1971 – The USSR launched Mars 3. It would arrive at Mars in December and its lander would become the first spacecraft to land successfully on Mars.

In 2014 – Apple announced it would acquire Beats Electronics and Beats Music for $3 billion. Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine would join the company with the titles of ‘Jimmy’ and ‘Dre.’

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In 1931 – Auguste Piccard and Charles Knipfer took the first manned trip into the stratosphere when they rode in a pressurized cabin attached to a balloon to an altitude of 51,800 feet.

In 1959 – After almost a decade, MIT shut down its Whirlwind computer. It ran 35 hours a week at 90 percent utility using an electrostatic tube memory.

In 1986 – Dragon Quest was released in Japan. It combined the the full-screen map of Ultima with the battle and statistics-oriented screens of Wizardry and paved the way for RPG games.

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In 1969 – Apollo 10 returned to Earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the manned moon landing.

In 1981 – Satya Pal Asija received the first US patent for a computer software program. It was called Swift-answer. The patent took seven years to issue, and the validity of software patents has been debated ever since.

In 1995 – Bill Gates authored an internal memo entitled “The Internet Tidal Wave” calling the Internet the most important development since the IBM personal computer. Microsoft soon got to work on its own Web browser.

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In 1844 – Samuel Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought” from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol to the Mount Clair train depot in Baltimore, Maryland. It was the first public demonstration of the telegraph.

In 1935 – General Electric Co. sold the first spectrophotometer. It could detect two million different shades of color and make a permanent record chart of the results.

In 1961 – Wes Clark began working on the Laboratory Instrument Computer (LINC), at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. It was one of the earliest examples of a user-friendly machine that you could communicate with while it operated. It’s credited with setting the standard for personal computer design.

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In 1825 – William Sturgeon exhibited the electromagnet in a practical form for the first time. The exhibition accompanied the reading of a paper, recorded in the Transactions of the Society of Arts for 1825 (Vol xliii, p.38).

In 1908 – John Bardeen was born. He grew up to win the Nobel Prize twice, once for inventing the transistor, and once for figuring out superconductivity.

In 1995 – Sun Microsystems Inc. announced the programming language Java and the accompanying Web browser HotJava at the SunWorld ’95 convention.

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In 1973 – Bob Metcalfe of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center wrote a memo on an IBM selectric typewriter, outlining how to connect personal computers to a shared printer. Metcalfe says “If Ethernet was invented in any one memo, by any one person, or on any one day, this was it.”

In 1980 – Namco released an arcade game called Puck-Man. When it was released in the US in October the name was altered to Pac-Man.

In 1990 – Microsoft released Windows 3.0. It featured big improvements in interface and multitasking. It’s Control Panel feature caught the eye of Apple which sued, and lost.

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In 1937 – North Pole-1 became the first scientific research station to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean. The Soviet Union established it about 20 km from the North Pole. It operated for 9 months, and travelled 2,850 kilometres.

In 1952 – IBM announced the Model 701, the first computer designed for scientific calculation. The 701 used electrostatic storage tube memory and kept information on magnetic tape. It sold much better than expected with 19 governments and large companies snapping them up.

In 2010 – The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), launched a solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket. The vessel would test out the performance of solar sails, and make a Venus flyby later in the year.

In 2013 – Microsoft announced their newest game console, the Xbox One at a press conference in Redmond, Washington.

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In 1875 – 17 nations (including the US) signed the ‘Convention du Mètre’ in Paris, France, establishing the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.

In 1891 – The first public demonstration of a prototype Kinetoscope was given at Edison’s laboratory, for approximately 150 members of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs. The New York Sun reported on the demonstration.

In 1958 – Robert Baumann obtained a patent for a satellite. (US. No. 2,835,548). The patent stipulated the government could use the technology without having to pay royalties.

In 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope sent its first light image back to Earth, taken with the wide field/planetary camera.

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In 1857 – William Francis Channing of Boston, Mass. and Moses Gerrish Farmer, of Salem, Mass. received the first US patent for an “electromagnetic fire alarm telegraph for cities” (No. 17,355).

In 1961 – Venera 1 became the first manmade object to fly by another planet, passing within 100,000 KM of Venus. The probe did not send back any data having lost contact with Earth a month earlier.

In 2006 – Apple opened its 20,000-square foot store at 767 Fifth Avenue. It was the second Apple store in New York City but the iconic glass cube made it the most famous.

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