1856 – Professor Hamilton L. Smith of Gambier, Ohio received the first US patent for the tintype photographic picture process. It described a method for “the obtaining of positive impressions upon a japanned surface previously prepared upon an iron or other metallic or mineral sheet or plate by means of collodion and a solution of a salt of silver.”

http://books.google.com/books?id=_FpDBhD6wRYC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=february+19+1856+Hamilton+L.+Smith&source=bl&ots=g_4P7omIhZ&sig=0zdrIL8cWnnF1ZyrRO7FqsGvanM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=imljUN7MGcbbyQG_zoGoCA&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=february%2019%201856%20Hamilton%20L.%20Smith&f=false

1878 – Thomas Edison received a US patent (No. 200521) for the phonograph. His first recording was of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” spoken into a large horn which transmitted vibrations to a needle that cut the recording on a hand-rotated cylinder.
http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2002/02-13.jsp

1990 – John and Thomas Knoll launched a small software package for manipulating images meant to be bundled with scanners. It was called Photoshop.

http://thenextweb.com/creativity/2015/02/19/photoshop-turns-25-adobe-senior-product-manager-recounts-a-proud-creation-thats-always-on-the-lookout/

2002 – Odyssey, the first of six current operational Mars vehicles began its mission to map the planet.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1209

2014 – Facebook announced it was acquiring messaging app WhatsApp for $19 billion. http://newsroom.fb.com/News/805/Facebook-to-Acquire-WhatsApp

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1838 – In the small town of Chirlitz of the Austrian Empire Ernst Mach was born. His work in aerodynamics and supersonic speeds, led to the unit of measurement that bears his name. He would die one day after his birthday in 1916.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ernst-mach/

1908 -Dr Lee de Forest received a patent for “Space Telegraphy” which described a three-element vacuum tube later called the triode, which could amplify feeble electric currents, and proved especially useful for radio reception. Sorry it was not about Moon telegrams.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=6i1vAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

1977 – The Enterprise space shuttle orbiter prototype made the first of five “captive-inactive” flight tests, testing structural integrity and performance handling, while attached to the top of a 747 jumbo jet.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/multimedia/gallery/enterprise/12-04-20.html

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1965 – The Ranger 8 probe launched on its mission to photograph the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon. The photos paved the way to select the area as the site of the first manned Moon landing.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1965-010A

1996 – World chess champion Garry Kasparov defeated Deep Blue in game 6 winning the match 4-2. He would lose the next match a year later.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kasparov-defeats-chess-playing-computer

2000 – Microsoft released Windows 2000, the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and the final Windows release to display the “Windows NT” designation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_4.0
http://news.microsoft.com/2000/02/17/windows-2000-now-broadly-available/

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1880 – 30 engineers from eight states met in the New York editorial offices of the American Machinist to found the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
https://www.asme.org/about-asme/who-we-are/engineering-history

1968 – The first-ever 911 call was placed by Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite from Haleyville City Hall to US Rep. Tom Bevill at the city’s police station.
http://archives.ubalt.edu/bsr/articles/feb%2016.pdf

1978 – After a particularly harsh January gave them plenty of time for programming, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess completed the Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS) in Chicago. It was the first BBS.

http://pcmuseum.tripod.com/bbs.htm

2016 – Magistrate Sheri Pym of the US District Court of Central California ordered Apple to assist the US FBI in cracking the password on an iPhone 5C. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Apple’s intent to resist the order writing, “Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices.” The FBI eventually accessed the data without Apple’s assistance.

http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2714001/SB-Shooter-Order-Compelling-Apple-Asst-iPhone.pdf

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1897 – Ferdinand Braun published a paper in the journal Annalen der Physik und Chemie describing his “Braun tube”, the first cathode-ray oscilloscope, which paved the way for the modern CRT.

http://www.radarworld.org/history.pdf

1946 – A few days after its first public demonstration, the first practical all-digital computer, ENIAC was formally dedicated.
http://www.ushistory.org/more/eniac/public.htm

1995 – The FBI arrested Kevin Mitnick on charges of wire fraud and breaking into the computer systems of several major corporations.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2012/02/feb-15-1995-mitnick-arrested/

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1924 – The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company merged with its subsidiary and took the subsidiary’s name, International Business Machines Corporation. Yes it was later shortened to IBM.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/reference/faq_0000001707.html

1989 – The Department of Defense put the NAVSTAR II-1 into orbit, the first of 24 satellites that would make up the global positioning system.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1989-013A

2005 – The domain name YouTube.com was registered. It would eventually become the dominant place to share videos on the Internet.

http://mashable.com/2010/02/14/youtube-birthday/

2011 – IBM’s Watson, a computer system, competed against Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Watson cleaned up, winning $77,147 to Mr. Jennings’s $24,000 and Mr. Rutter’s $21,600.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/science/17jeopardy-watson.html?pagewanted=all

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1895 – French patent No. 245,032 was filed for appareil servant à l’obtention et à la vision des épreuves chrono-photographiques, AKA the Cinématographe, a combined motion-picture camera and projector.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WVVX4NHS8TwC&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=french+patent+cinematographe+245,032&source=bl&ots=xDfRtz4MgE&sig=Eog12dLJYTYM_xx9YrCq3rkgUJI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sn8xT4TJK66NigLk7qSVAw&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=french%20patent%20cinematographe%20245%2C032&f=false

1946 – ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) the first practical, all-electronic computer was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electronics. The New York Times carried the report the next day.

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/eniac.pdf

2001 – Microsoft gave the first public look at their new version of Windows, called Windows XP, formerly codenamed Whistler.

http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/02/13/technology/microsoft/

2002 – The first version of Microsoft’s .NET was released as part of Visual Studio.NET.

https://news.microsoft.com/2002/02/13/microsoft-launches-xml-web-services-revolution-with-visual-studio-net-and-net-framework/

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1877 – Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone for the first time in public at the Salem Lyceum Hall. The demonstration ended with the sending of the first telephone news dispatch which was received by the Boston Globe.

http://www.salemweb.com/tales/lyceum.shtml

1973 – Along Interstate 71 in Ohio, the first metric distance road signs to be erected in the US were put in place. They informed of the distance between Columbus and Cleveland and Columbus and Cincinnati.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/02/12/loc_ohiodate0212.html

2001 – The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touched down on 433 Eros after transmitting 69 close up pictures. It became the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

http://near.jhuapl.edu/

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1847 – Proud parents Samuel and Nancy welcomed their seventh and last child into the world. Thomas Edison would grow up to embody the word inventor.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/179233/Thomas-Alva-Edison

1970 – With the launch of Osumi 5, Japan became the fourth country (after the US, USSR and France) to place a satellite into orbit using its own rocket.
http://www.kahaku.go.jp/english/exhibitions/permanent/outdoors/index.html

1997 – The Space Shuttle Discovery launched on Mission STS-82 with the objective of making significant upgrades to the scientific capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope. The upgrades helped turn the Hubble from a punchline, to one of the greatest telescopes ever created.
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-82/mission-sts-82.html

2004 – Ben Hammersley wrote a column for The Guardian called “Audible revolution” describing a boom in “radio” on the Internet. He proposed three terms for the new wave of shows, Audioblogging, GuerillaMedia, and Podcasting. It was the first known publication of the term podcasting.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/feb/12/broadcasting.digitalmedia

2016 – Researchers at LIGO published evidence of the first direct observation of gravitational waves in Physical Review Letters. Einstein predicted such waves as part of General Relativity.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/11/10965312/einstein-gravitational-waves-discovered-announced-video

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1958 – Scientists at Lincoln Laboratory at MIT bounced radar signals off the planet Venus, calling it the first measurement of interplanetary distances.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19590319&id=c1EqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YFEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7082,1174229

1996 – Chess’s international grandmaster Garry Kasparov began a six game match against IBM’s Deep Blue. Deep Blue won the first game, the first time that a current world champion had ever been beaten by a computer opponent under regular tournament conditions.

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/watch/html/c.10.html
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/02/0210computer-deep-blue-beats-chess-champ-kasparov/

2004 – While talking about their forthcoming game, Game Neverending, Ludicorp unveiled a side project called Flickr at the O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference in San Diego. It was a service that melded chat rooms with real-time photo sharing.
http://techland.time.com/2014/02/10/flickr-turns-10-the-rise-fall-and-revival-of-a-photo-sharing-community/?curator=MediaREDEF

2009 – One of Motorola’s communication satellites Iridium 33 collided with defunct Russian satellite Kosmos-2251 destroying both. It was an unprecedented space collision.
http://www.space.com/5542-satellite-destroyed-space-collision.html

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