105 – Ts’ai Lun demonstrated his process for making paper to the Han emperor in China. He probably didn’t invent it, but he certainly turned it into an industry for the first time. And the industry still survives 20 centuries later even in the face of the computers that plot its doom.

http://www.historychannel.com.au/classroom/day-in-history/481/paper-invented

1985 – The Southern New England Telephone Company turned on ConnNet, the nation’s first local, public packet-switching network. Customers could access CompuServ, NewsNet and other services at a blistering 4,800 to 56,000 bits per second. The service’s X.25 protocol went obsolete in the 1990s with the popularity of the Internet Protocol.

http://books.google.com/books?id=oVnVdSTcPbAC&pg=PT146&lpg=PT146&dq=connnet+1985+southern+new+england+telephone+x.25&source=bl&ots=72T_A7qK_4&sig=f_SUUr-etmXoUQ1RZZ6NXniSj1M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W4EyUd7PIOTUigKC8oHoDA&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg

2011 – Apple began selling the iPad 2, a thinner version of the first iPad, that also included a camera.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/03/10iPad-2-Arrives-Tomorrow.html

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1876 – Alexander Graham Bell spoke the immortal words “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.” over a telephone in his Boston laboratory, summoning his assistant from the next room. It is widely considered the first instance of someone using technology when they bloody well could have just got up and spoke to someone in person. It is also widely considered the first phone call.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/mar10.html

1891 – Almon B. Strowger was issued a US patent for his electromechanical switch to automate a telephone exchange. Strowger wasn’t the first to think of of automatic switching but he was the first to make a practical switch.

http://www.ospmag.com/issue/article/052008-Lies

2000 -The Nasdaq hit 5,048.62, the highest point of the dot-com boom. The bust began the next day.

http://money.cnn.com/2000/03/10/markets/markets_newyork/

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1948 – The University of California at Berkeley and the Atomic Energy Commission announced the artificial production of mesons using the 184-inch cyclotron at the university’s Radiation Laboratory.

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Research-Review/Magazine/1981/81fepi3.html

1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launched, carrying a human dummy and and the dog Chernushka. It completed 1 orbit and was successfully recovered upon return. Yes, the dog made it back unharmed.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1961-008A

2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-133 made its final landing after 39 flights.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/mar/HQ_11-068_Discovery_Lands.html

2015 – Apple and HBO announced a new Internet-only streaming version of HBO called HBO Now would launch in early April exclusively on Apple products including the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. Apple also announced the Apple Watch would come April 24.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/03/09HBO-NOW-Premiering-in-April.html

2016 – In the first of 5 games, DeepMind’s AlphaGo machine intelligence defeated 18-time Go champion Lee See-dol in Seoul, Korea.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/9/11184362/google-alphago-go-deepmind-result

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1955 – Doug Ross demonstrated the Director tape for MIT’s Whirlwind machine, the first digital computer with real-time text and graphics. The idea of the Director Tape was to allow multiple problems to be read by the computer in one session without humans having to intervene and change tapes. In other words, an operating system.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/03/0308doug-ross-director-tape/

1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, was transmitted on BBC Radio 4. Some credit Adams with accidentally predicting the PDA and smartphone.

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/hitchhikers-history1.htm

1979 – Philips publicly demonstrated a prototype of an optical digital audio disc at a press conference called “Philips Introduces Compact Disc.”

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:Compact_Disc_Audio_Player,_1979

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1876 – Alexander Graham Bell received a US patent for an “Improvement in Telegraphy” (No.174,465) which established the principle of bidirectional signals that made the telephone possible.

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/albell/bpat.1.html

1926 – The first successful Transatlantic telephone call was placed between New York City and London. Transatlantic service began the following year at $75 a minute.
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/on-this-day/march-7/

1994 – The Supreme Court found that 2 Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh Pretty Woman” was fair use, and not a violation of copyright, thus ensuring the future of The Onion.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1292.ZS.html

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1937 – Valentina Tereshkova was born in the Yaroslavl region of Russia. She would grow up to become the first woman in space and only woman ever to fly solo in space.

http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/tereshkova.html?

1992 – The first media-hyped computer virus reached fever pitch as the Michelangelo boot sector virus began to affect computers. Worldwide catastrophe did not follow.

http://www.zdnet.com/news/michelangelo-virus-is-it-overhyped-or-a-real-threat/98759?

Safricom launched M-Pesa in Kenya, a service to let users receive, send and store money using a basic mobile phone.

http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/vodafone-group-releases/2017/m-pesa-10.html?

2009 – NASA launched the Kepler space observatory, with a mission to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/launch/index.html?

2012 – Google consolidated its various online stores, Android Market, Google Books, Google Music, and Google video, into one store called Google Play.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/google-play-launched-feeling-the-amazon-squeeze/7073?

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1975 – The Homebrew Computer Club, held its first meeting in the garage of Gordon French in Menlo Park, California. 32 people showed up for the first meeting. John Draper, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were some of the more famous members of the club.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/?

1981 – The ZX81 was launched by Sinclair Research in Britain for £69.95 and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world. It was much more successful than it’s predecessor the ZX80.

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/5447/Sinclair-ZX81-Lanuched?

1982 – Four days after it’s twin, the second of two Soviet probes to Venus, the Venera 14 landed on the planet. Venera 13 and 14 would continue to send data until 1983.
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/missions/venera1314.html?

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1976 – The first Freon-cooled Cray-1 supercomputer was shipped to Los Alamos Laboratories, in New Mexico at a cost of $19,000,000.

http://www.0x07bell.net/WWWMASTER/CrayWWWStuff/halliePics/chips1989.JPG
http://library.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/getfile?00236579.pdf

2000 – The Sony PlayStation 2 went on sale in Japan.

http://kotaku.com/5985252/believe-it-or-not-the-playstation-2-is-getting-more-expensive-in-japan?

2007 – Election Day was held in Estonia, and for the first time in the world, voters were allowed to vote on the Internet. Approximately 30,000 voters took advantage of electronic voting. Ballots had to be completed three days before election day.

http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/CoE_and_NEC_Report_E-Voting_2007.pdf

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1847 – In Edinburgh, Scotland, an expert in vocal physiology and elocution welcomed his newborn son into the world. He was named after his father. Alexander Graham Bell would go on to become synonymous with the telephone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/bell_alexander_graham.shtml

1885 – The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was incorporated in New York State as a subsidiary of American Bell Telephone.
https://books.google.com/books?id=gaRBTHdUKmgC&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=march+3+1885+att&source=bl&ots=EXSIbxJ3yI&sig=5HwqVvCvOf5pctJt8CChEsUjWyE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6dzcVNWJKJD2oASG9oDoAQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q=march%203%201885%20att&f=false??

1966- The BBC announced plans to begin broadcasting television programmes in colour the following year, becoming the first European broadcaster to provide regular colour broadcasts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/3/newsid_2514000/2514719.stm?

2017 – Nintendo began shipping its Nintendo Switch console. It featured a removable tablet that could play games on the go.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nintendo-switch-day-one-patch-whats-in-it-2017-3?

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1908 – Gabriel Lippman proposed using a series of lenses at a picture’s surface instead of opaque barrier lines, allowing three dimensional pictures. He titled his presentation to the French Academy of Sciences “La Photographie Integral”.

http://www.outeraspect.com/history_lenticular.php?

1983 – CBS Records launched the first major compact disc music marketing campaign, launching 16 titles. CDs had gone on sale to the public the previous October in Japan.

https://books.google.com/books?id=8NCWWdZzPksC&pg=PA216&lpg=PA216&dq=march+2+1983+CBS+records&source=bl&ots=rcYY70RzWK&sig=ojeAlsSWjAlrFU5u9J9kQlkTXv4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4yIPuhM7ZAhXGqVQKHWfUCoQQ6AEITTAD#v=onepage&q=march%202%201983%20CBS%20records&f=false

2004 – Review site Engadget launched with a post about T-Flash, a new memory card format, by founder Peter Rojas.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/02/today-is-engadgets-10th-birthday/?

2010 – The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany rejected legislation requiring electronic communications traffic data retention for a period of 6 months as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.
https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2010/03/articles/german-federal-constitutional-court-declares-implementation-of-data-retention-directive-unconstitutional/?

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