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.

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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. (U.S. 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 U.S. 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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In 1923 – The first patent application for the rotary-dial telephone was submitted in France by Antoine Barnay.

In 1969 – Apollo 10 launched, completing all the stages of a moon landing mission without landing on the Moon. Astronauts Eugene Cernan and Thomas Stafford descended in the Lunar Module to within 15KM of the lunar surface.

In 1998 – The United States Department of Justice and twenty U.S. states filed civil actions against Microsoft, alleging the company abused monopoly power regarding operating system and Web browser sales.

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In 1902 – While going through objects recovered by divers near Antikythera off the coast of Greece, archaeologist Valerois Stais discovered a strange device with gear-wheels inside. The Antikythera mechanism has been puzzling investigators for over a hundred years.

In 1943 – The U.S. Army and the University of Pennsylvania signed a contract to develop ENIAC. It was planned to use vacuum tubes and calculate ballistic firing tables.

In 1954 – The first shovel load of earth was dug on the Meyrin site of the first CERN Laboratory building in Geneva.

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In 1888 – Emile Berliner demonstrated his flat disc audio recording and reproduction in a lecture he gave to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, which was printed in the institute’s Journal (vol. 125, no. 60).

In 1946 – At the meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE, now IEEE) in San Francisco, Jack Mullin demonstrated the world’s first professional-quality tape recorded in the US.

In 1960 – While working at the Hughes Research Laboratories of the Hughes Aircraft company in Malibu, California, physicist Theodore Maiman used an artificial ruby to create the first laser.

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In 1905 – 110 acres of land in southern Nevada were auctioned off, founding a new city. They would become downtown Las Vegas which would grow to become the host for major tech events like Comdex, CES and more.

In 1987 – The Soviet Union launched the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 250 in Kazakhstan. It failed to reach orbit. Polyus was designed to destroy SDI satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser.

In 2004 – Using a computer with a 2.4-GHz Pentium 4 processor, Josh Findley discovered the 41st Mersenne prime, 224,036,583 – 1. Mersenne primes have a close connection to perfect numbers, which are equal to the sum of their proper divisors.

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In 1973 – The United States launched Skylab, the country’s first space station as part of the Apollo space program.

In 1984 – According to his Facebook profile Mark Zuckerberg was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He would grow up to found Facebook.

In 1992 – Texas Instruments decided to take on the dominance of Intel, announcing its own 486 microprocessor chip. Cyrix corp. designed the chip for TI, but it proved unsuccessful in weakening Intel’s dominance.

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In 1884 – A group of people interested in the new field of electricity met in New York to start the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

In 1939 – Franklin Doolittle put experimental station W1XPW on the air, making it the first commercial FM radio station in the United States. The station later became WDRC-FM in Bloomfield, Connecticut.

In 1958 – The trademark Velcro was registered, protecting the name of the multi-purpose material that manages cables everywhere.

In 1976 – Atari released the video game Breakout giving the paddle controller something besides Pong to be useful for.

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In 1936 – University of Washington education professor August Dvorak received a patent for his new more efficient keyboard layout. While widely recognised as superior to the QWERTY layout, the Dvorak keyboard is not widely used.

In 1941 – German engineer Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the first program-controlled electromechanical digital computer. It succeeded the Z1 which was the first binary digital computer.

In 2005 – Elijah Wood revealed the Xbox 360 on the MTV Music Awards. Microsoft didn’t announce price or release dates, only saying it would arrive for sale by the end of the year.

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