1923 – The chimes of Big Ben were broadcast on radio for the first time by the BBC, beginning a new year’s tradition.

http://www.visitlondon.com/attractions/culture/big-ben

1938 – Cops in Indianapolis put Indiana University professor Rolla Harger’s drunkometer to its first practical New Year’s Eve test as a breath analyzer. Suspected drunks blew into a balloon and the air was mixed with a chemical solution that turned darker the more alcohol was present. The more portable Breathalyzer replaced the drunkometer in 1958.
http://www.healthcentral.com/dailydose/cf/2013/12/30/first_drunkometer_dec_31_1938

2001 – Microsoft provided its last day of support for Windows 95 making it officially “obsolete” according to the Microsoft Lifecycle policy, after only six years.

http://www.winbeta.org/news/happy-birthday-windows-95

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1873 – A number of gentlemen in New York City founded the American Metrological Society, feeling that a change to the Metric System was needed by civilized nations. 100 years later they’re defunct and gallons, miles, and Fahrenheit rule the US.

http://books.google.com/books?id=DKhPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=american+metrological+society+1873&source=bl&ots=gT8i4uxLl6&sig=OStywp4Jujdjwfuac0vsHqSVCMI&hl=en&ei=j5DhTrDpG8nQiAK6jMWVDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CFoQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=american%20metrological%20society%201873&f=false
http://www.archive.org/stream/bulletinamerica00socigoog#page/n1/mode/2up

1913 – Dr William David Coolidge received his patent for improvements in tungsten and methods for making filaments in incandescent lights. It made light bulbs last a lot longer. Too bad that in 1928, GE got a court to declare the patent was not an invention.

http://books.google.com/books?id=UX44AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA824&lpg=PA824&dq=patent+1,082,933&source=bl&ots=M0sZ-KWp7T&sig=yjGTG16ZzYsKrQKQWU8Q5QrhKF8&hl=en&ei=xJHhTtTWC-iLiALPueEk&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=patent%201%2C082%2C933&f=false

1924 – Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced that he had found stars in the spiral nebula Andromeda, and using Leavitt’s formula measured them as 860,000 light years away proving Andromeda was a separate galaxy. He would go on to find a dozen more galaxies.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1971ASPL…10..425B/0000427.000.html

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1949 – TV station KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut became the first ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.

http://schoollibrary.org/articles/KC2XAK

1952 – The first hearing aid using a junction transistor went on sale, the model 1010 was manufactured by the Sonotone Corporation in Elmsford, New York, US.

http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Transistor%20(Body)/Sonotone/info/sonotone1010.htm

1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gave a talk called “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, in which he suggested it should be possible to make nanoscale machines that can arrange atoms the way we want.
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html

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1886 – Josephine Garis Cochrane of Shelbyville, Illinois received the first US patent for a commercially successful dishwasher. Dishes fit in compartments in a wheel that turned inside a copper boiler. Her company eventually became KitchenAid.

http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2001/01-62.jsp

1895 – The first commercial presentation of the famous Lumière Cinématographe took place at the Salon Indien of the Grand Café in Paris. Invited payees got to see ten films.

http://www.precinemahistory.net/1895.htm

1969 – In Helsinki, Finland Nils and Anna Torvalds gave birth to their son Linus. He would start out dabbling on his grandfather’s Commodore Vic-20 and end up developing the open source Linux operating system.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/600294/Linus-Torvalds

2005 – The European Space Agency and the Galileo Joint launched GIOVE-A the first test-bed satellite for the Galileo geo-location system.

http://www.esa.int/esaNA/SEMFZZ1VW3H_index_0.html

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1571 – In Well der Stadt, Wurttemberg of the Holy Roman Empire, Johannes Kepler was born. His theories like the laws of planetary motion came in handy for Isaac Newton.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/JohannesKepler/

1968 – Apollo 8 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first manned orbit of the Moon.

http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/as08/a08facts.htm

2007 – Warner Music Group became the third major music label to begin selling DRM-free MP3s through Amazon.
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/12/27/warner-music-group-ditches-drm-on-amazon-mp3-only/

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1791 – At 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England, (we think), Betsy and Benjamin welcomed their son Charles Babbage into the world. He would grow up to make a difference– engine.
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/about/babbage.html

1933 – Edwin Armstrong received a patent for his method of eliminating static in a radio broadcast using frequency modulation. He would license out the technology but many companies would embrace FM radio without his permission and he spent much of his later life battling in court.

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

1982 – Time’s January 3rd issue arrived on newsstands with the computer on the cover as Machine of the Year. It was the first non-human to gain the honor since the Man of the Year concept started in 1927 with Charles Lindbergh.
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/This+history+December+1982/9324584/story.html

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1741- In Uppsala, Sweden, Anders Celsius first used a Delisle thermometer he had marked up with 100 gradations between boiling and freezing. It was the first use of the centigrade scale of temperature.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IJ91od-UYygC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=centigrade+scale+1741&source=bl&ots=kPQL5iw7ec&sig=Wh0yZTFng0stpDzZ-yPrbGcTMtc&hl=en&ei=6mzYToWcNMGMiAL0n5WqCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&sqi=2&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=centigrade%20scale%201741&f=false

1959 – Sony announced its first television set, the transistor-based TV-301. It would go on sale in Japan the following May.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/capsule/21/index.html

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee with help from CERN computer scientist Robert Cailliau and others— set up the first successful communication between a Web browser and server via the Internet.

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TimBook-old/History.html

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1952 – William Ross Ashby wrote in his journal, “Following a suggestion from Dad I have decided to write an Introducton to Cybernetics.” The book was said to provide one of the most accessible ways to understand the work of researchers like Alan Turing. Ashby used the term “amplifying intelligence” in the book.

http://www.rossashby.info/journal/page/4298.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=an+introduction+to+cybernetics&oq=an+introduction+to+cybernetics&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.21854j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8

1955 – As NORAD tells the story, a misprinted phone number caused Continental Air Defense Command, CONAD to start getting calls from children for Santa Claus, so Director of Operations Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for signs of St. Nick. NORAD was created in 1958 and they’ve kept up the tracking tradition ever since.

http://www.norad.mil/AboutNORAD/NORADTracksSanta.aspx

1955 – The Associated Press syndicated a story that Santa Claus was being guaranteed safe passage into the United States. The story reported that, “CONAD, Army, Navy and Marine Air Forces will continue to track and guard Santa and his sleigh on his trip to and from the US.”
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/how-the-u-s-military-turned-santa-claus-into-a-cold-wa-1664149776

1968 – The crew of Apollo 8 delivered a live, televised Christmas Eve broadcast after becoming the first humans to orbit another space body.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo8_xmas.html

1999 – The very seasonal HTML 4.01 was published by the World Wide Web Consortium. HTML 4.01 remained the HTML standard for well over a decade.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/

2014 – Sony released its film “The Interview” online through Google and Microsoft as well as in limited theaters. The film’s release had been canceled after threats were issued and major theater chains declined to show it.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/24/media/interview-digital-release/

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1947 – John Bardeen and Walter Brattain demonstrated their new discovery, the transistor, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. William Shockley, who contributed to the invention, missed the presentation.

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/events/miraclemo.html

1968 – Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, Jr., and William A. Anders made the lunar-orbit-insertion maneuver on their way to becoming the first humans to orbit the Moon.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4205/ch11-6.html

1986 – Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager touched down at Edwards Air Force Base in the experimental airplane Voyager, completing the first non-stop, round- the- world flight without refueling.

http://centennialofflight.net/essay/Explorers_Record_Setters_and_Daredevils/rutan/EX32.htm

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1666 – Seven mathematicians and seven physicists gathered by Jean-Baptiste Colbert met in the king’s library to found the French Academy of Sciences.
http://www.interacademies.net/Academies/ByRegion/EuropeCentralAsia/France.aspx
http://www.academie-sciences.fr/

1882 – Edward H. Johnson of the Edison Illumination Company strung a single power cord with red white and blue lights on his Christmas tree becoming the first person to use Christmas tree lights.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/12/1222johnson-creates-christmas-lights/

1885 – A patent for a gravity switchback railway was issued to La Marcus Thompson of Coney Island, New York. You and I might call it a “roller coaster.”

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT332762

1968 – At 3:01 PM Eastern time, Apollo 8 transmitted the first US. live telecast from a manned spacecraft in outer space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR0VI7dSksk

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.