In 1940 – At McNutt Hall at Dartmouth College, George Stibitz demonstrated the first remote operation of a computer. He connected to his Complex Number Generator at Bell labs by telephone using 28-wire teletype cable.

In 1947 – While troubleshooting the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator, operators found a moth trapped between the points of relay #70 in Panel F. They affixed the bug to the log and wrote “First actual case of bug being found.” While this was not the first use of the term ’bug’ for a computer problem, ‘debugging’ became popular for fixing bugs after this case.

In 1999 – The Sega Dreamcast debuted in North America. However many were distracted by the supposed 9/9/99 bug that ended up being just as much of a non-problem as the Y2K bug.

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In 1930 – The first roll of waterproof, transparent, pressure-sensitive tape was sold. Its brand name “Scotch” has become synonymous with cellophane tape.

In 1966 – The TV show Star Trek made its network television debut with the episode “The Man Trap”. Star Trek would have a profound influence on future technology thought and design.

In 2004 – NASA’s unmanned spacecraft Genesis crash-landed when its parachute failed to open.

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In 1927 – The first fully electronic television system was demonstrated by Philo Taylor Farnsworth in San Francisco.

In 1979 – The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, ESPN, makes its debut. It will become one of the main drivers of cable TV adoption and one of the main factors in the switch to Internet television.

In 1981 – The first large parallel processing computer, ILLIAC IV, ends its nearly decade-long life at the University of Illinois.

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In 1947 – The aircraft-carrier Midway became the first U.S. vessel from which a long-range rocket was launched. The rocket had a mishap though, and exploded at 5,000 feet.

In 1954 – US President Eisenhower waved a ceremonial “neutron wand” over a neutron counter in Denver, Colorado, to signal a bulldozer in Shippingport, Pennsylvania to begin construction on the first commercial nuclear power plant. It was part of the “Atoms for Peace” program.

In 1997 – The USS Grace Murray Hopper, guided missile destroyer, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in San Francisco, named after the computer pioneer.

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In 1977 – NASA launched Voyager 1 after a brief delay. Although it was launched 16 days after Voyager 2, it’s faster flight path would take it past Jupiter first.

In 1980 – The last IBM 7030, AKA STRETCH, mainframe computer was decommissioned at Brigham Young University.

In 2007 – Apple introduced the iPod Touch, bringing the multitouch first introduced on the iPhone, to its popular iPod line.

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In 1888 – George Eastman was issued U.S. patent No. 388,850 for his roll-film box camera.

In 1956 – IBM introduced the IBM 350 Disk storage unit for the RAMAC 305, the first commercial computer to use magnetic disk storage.

In 1998 – Larry Page and Sergey Brin filed for incorporation of Google, allowing them to cash a $100,000 check Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun, had written to Google Inc.

In 2013 – Samsung announced a smartwatch called Galaxy Gear that could only be used with its own phones and tablets that ran Android 4.3.

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In 1930 – An experimental electric engine was put in service by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad between Hoboken and Montclair, NJ. Thomas Edison served as engineer at the throttle.

In 1976 – Viking 2 landed on Mars and began taking high resolution pictures, measuring the atmosphere and surface, and looking for evidence of life.

In 1993 – Infogear filed an application for a U.S. trademark on “I PHONE” for its “communications terminals. The company would later register “IPhone” as well. Cisco acquired Infogear in 2000 and later worked out a deal with Apple to share the name.

In 2013 – Nokia announced it would sell its devices and services unit, the division in chatge of making mobile phones, to Microsoft for $7.2 billion.

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In 1859 – A unique combination of solar events including a magnetic explosion severely affected the young telegraph network in North America and Europe. Wires shorted out, fires started and some machines reportedly worked even when disconnected from batteries.

1997 – IBM announced that its RS/6000 SP model parallel supercomputer, was now 58 percent faster than Deep Blue, the computer that beat Kasparov at chess.

In 2001 – At ECTS in London, Blizzard announced an online RPG version of its popular Warcraft franchise, called “World of Warcraft”.

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In 1902 -Georges Méliès’ Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) debuted in France. It is often considered the first real science fiction film.

In 1994 – The United States Library of Congress held the first of several meetings to plan the conversion of its materials to digital form to make them accessible by computer networks.

In 1996 – Apple released its Pippin game console in the US. The idea was to provide an inexpensive game-focused computer. Apple licensed third parties like Bandai to make Pippin consoles.

In 2008 – Google launched its Web browser called Google Chrome.

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In 1897 – Thomas Edison received a patent for the kinetographic camera, the forerunner of the motion picture film projector.

In 1994 – Stockholders approved the merger of Aldus Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc. It united the two driving forces behind desktop publishing software. Aldus Pagemaker became Adobe Pagemaker.

In 1997 – The developer release of Apple’s new OS, code name Grail1Z4 / Titan1U was released. It was known formally as Rhapsody and would evolve into OS X.

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