In 1895 – The first demonstration of A A Popov’s electromagnetic wave receiver took place at a meeting of the Russian Physical Chemical Society in St.- Petersburg. It was essential to the development of wireless communications.

Also In 1895 – Otto Steiger received a patent for the Millionaire calculating machine. Switzerland’s Hans Egli made 4,700 of the 120-pound things. The Millionaire’s chief feature was the ability to do direct multiplication with a single rotation of the handle!

In 1952 – British radar engineer Geoffrey Dummer introduced the concept of the integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C.

In 1896 – Samuel Pierpoint Langley’s Aerodrome No. 5 made the first successful flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven, heavier-than-air craft of substantial size.

In 1949 – The EDSAC, the first practical stored program computer, performed its first calculation. It operated ata speed of 714 operations per second.

In 2002 – Apple’s Steve Jobs previewed Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar during his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote. It featured a handwriting technology dubbed Inkwell, an iChat instant messenger client, QuickTime 6 integration and more.

In 1961 – First NASA astronaut Alan Shepard piloted the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule on its 15-minute 28-second suborbital flight.

In 1992 – Id Software released Wolfenstein 3-D. It wasn’t the original first person shooter, but it launched the form into widespread popularity.

In 1999 – Microsoft shipped Windows 98 SE to manufacturers. The new version included Internet Connection Sharing, Internet Explorer 5, Windows NetMeeting 3.

In 1995 – German electronics company Escom AG bought the rights to the name, patents and intellectual property of Commodore Electronics Ltd. for $10 million. Commodore had gone bankrupt the year before.

In 2000 – The “I Love You” virus spread to 55 million computers around the world, hijacking hard drives and deleting, renaming, or damaging files. The damage reached billions of dollars.

In 2004 – Apple announced that Steve Jobs would kick off that year’s Worldwide Developers Conference by talking about Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

In 1978 – Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) sent the first unsolicited mass commercial email to 600 west coast ARPANET users. The message informed users of DEC’s new computer and operating system with ARPANET support, the DECSYSTEM-2020 and TOPS-20.

In 1997 – In New York City, Gary Kasparov began his re-match match against IBM’s Deep Blue computer. He had won the previous match in February 1996 4-2.

In 2000 – A “geocache” was hidden outside Beaver Creek, Oregon, kicking off the first “Great American GPS Stash Hunt” and the hobby now called geocaching.

In 1887 65-year-old Rev. Hannibal Goodwin takes his nitrocellulose flexible film out of his attic laboratory and into the patent rolls. He beat the Eastman Kodak company by two years, but his vaguely-worded patent led to a 27-year legal battle.

In 1983 – Microsoft Corp. announced the two-button Microsoft Mouse built for IBM computers and meant to be used with the new Microsoft Word processor. Only 5,000 sold of the 10,000 made.

In 2000 – The United States government shut off Selective Access of the GPS system. That meant accurate positioning was no longer restricted to the US military. Positioning accuracy on the first day without Selective Access went from a 45-meter radius to a 6-meter radius.

In 1884 – Construction began in Chicago on the Home Insurance Building, generally acknowledged as the first steel-frame high-rise skyscraper.

1959 – Shortly after construction had begun, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland was officially named in honor of the pioneering rocket scientist.

1964 – Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny of Dartmouth College, launched a time-sharing system using a language meant to be learned quickly, called BASIC.

In 1916 – Claude Elwood Shannon was born. He is considered the father of information theory and is the man who coined the term bit for the fundamental unit of both data and computation.

In 1939 – RCA began regularly scheduled television service in New York City, with a telecast of President Franklin D. Roosevelt opening the New York World’s Fair. Programs were transmitted from mobile camera trucks to the main transmitter, which was connected to an aerial atop the Empire State Building. The broadcasting division of RCA was called the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC).

1993 – CERN released a statement declaring the software protocols developed for the World Wide Web would be available in the public domain.

In 1882 – Ernst Werner von Siemens presented his “trackless trolley” called the Elektromote in a Berlin suburb. The system pulled electricity from overhead wires, but used road wheels instead of tracks.

1953 – KECA-TV an ABC affiliate in Losa Angeles, California broadcast the first U.S. experimental 3D-TV. An episode of Space Patrol required specially polarized glasses to watch.

In 2005 -Apple released Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, introducing spotlight search and dashboard functionality.

In 2001 – Dennis Tito became the first “space tourist” in human history paying his own way to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

In 2003 – Apple opened the iTunes Music Store with 200,000 songs at 99 cents a piece. Songs could play back on any iPod and up to 3 authorised Macs. Windows users were out of luck but tracks could be burned to unlimited numbers of CDs.

Also In 2003 – Apple unveiled the “third-generation” iPod. The new iPods were thinner and featured the still used bottom Dock Connector port rather than the top-mounted FireWire port. The iPod controls also became entirely touch sensitive.