1847 – The London and North Western Railway along with the Caledonian Railway adopted London Time on instructions from the General Post Office. Other railways followed suit and this was seen as the establishment of the first time zone.

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/uk/time-zone-background.html

1913 – Henry Ford added the moving-chassis assembly line to produce Model T’s in his Highland Park, Michigan factory. It was the crowning glory in his attempts to increase efficiency and production.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling

1977 – Time Warner launched QUBE in Columbus, Ohio, the first two-way interactive cable system. One of its channels called “The Pinwheel” would later be relaunched as Nickelodeon.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9uFT080FcRkC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=qube+december+1+1977&source=bl&ots=AJ6f6oJ_JC&sig=esXBFvlqHhE0ErMUOTFdklUSHDs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Yp2SUpnlLI_UoAS-hYGgAg&ved=0CFsQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=qube%20december%201%201977&f=false

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1934 – The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman became the first to officially exceed 100 mph.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/makhist10_prog8b.shtml

1955 – A Colorado Springs youngster misdialed a telephone number set up for inquiries about Santa and accidentally called the Combat Operations Center of the Continental Air Defense Command. COC Commander Col. Harry Shoup told the child “There may be a guy called Santa Claus at the North Pole, but he’s not the one I worry about coming from that direction.”

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/how-the-u-s-military-turned-santa-claus-into-a-cold-wa-1664149776

1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merged to form BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world. Marconi had been founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897.

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Marconi_Electronic_Systems.html

2006 – Microsoft released Windows Vista for business use. Vista improved on security over Windows XP, but took criticism for other features, and never rivaled Windows XP in adoption.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/30/technology/microsoft/

1777 – The Spanish founded California’s first civilian settlement called Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. It would become the future state’s first capital and eventually the heart of Silicon Valley.

http://www.sanjoseca.gov/about.asp

1910 – The first US patent for a traffic signal system was issued to Ernest E. Sirrine. It switched an illuminated sign between the words “stop” and “proceed.”

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=0976939.PN.&OS=PN/0976939&RS=PN/0976939

1972 – Nolan Bushnell installed a coin-operated arcade game at Andy Capp’s tavern in Sunnyvale, California. It only played Allan Alcorn’s Pong. Within four months there were 10,000 across the country.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3900/the_history_of_pong_avoid_missing_.php?print=1

1974 – The January issue of Popular Electronics was published featuring the Altair 8800 microcomputer from Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the cover. For $439 you got everything you needed to build a computer in one kit boasting 256 bytes of memory!

http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/PopularElectronics/Jan1975/PE_Jan1975.htm

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1660 – Twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray met after Wren’s astronomy lecture to discuss the formal constitution of a society of philosophers that would become the Royal Society. It still exists and recently opened its archives on the Web.

http://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/

1814 – For the first time, an automatic steam-powered press printed The Times in London. German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer built the press. The Times quickly pointed out that they would not layoff workers, but instead increase printing, bringing the paper to a wider audience.

http://books.google.com/books?id=WAoGd7HfTB8C&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=november+28+1814+steam+Times&source=bl&ots=a6qKyzOeYD&sig=UjjQ47T_VoOpSMpaASm3dJ8UiW4&hl=en#v=onepage&q=november%2028%201814%20steam%20Times&f=false

1964 – NASA launched Mariner 4 toward Mars where it would conduct the first successful flyby of the red planet.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/missions/index-past.html

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1971 – The Soviet Union’s Mars 2 orbiter released its descent module which probably had too steep an angle of entry, and malfunctioned and crashed. But hey, it was still the first manmade object to reach the surface of Mars.

http://history.nasa.gov/printFriendly/marschro.htm

1998 – The Sega Dreamcast game console launched in Japan.
http://www.giantbomb.com/dreamcast/3045-37/

2001 – Scientists announced they had used the Hubble telescope to detect and analyze the atmosphere on an extrasolar planet for the first time. The planet HD 209458 b, unofficially called Osiris was found to have sodium in its atmosphere.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast27nov_1/

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1894 – Norbert Wiener was born in Columbia, Missouri. He would get his BA in mathematics at age 14 but is most remembered for his theory of regulation and of signal transmission which he called “cybernetics”

http://www.isss.org/lumwiener.htm

1922 – “Toll of the Sea” debuted. It was the first color movie that didn’t require a special projector, the second technicolor film ever, and the first in wide release.
http://archive.org/details/TheTollOfTheSeanovember261922

2003 – The final flight of a Concorde ended when the supersonic jet touched down at Filton, Bristol, England, the airfield where it was built.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/3238674.stm

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1816 – Gaslight illuminated Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theatre, improving on an innovation pioneered in London. Instead of coal the gas was created from pitch, reducing the malodorous vapors caused by the wonder’s creation.

http://www3.northern.edu/wild/LiteDes/ldhist.htm

1915 – Albert Einstein presented general theory of relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/11/economist-explains-17

1957 – PG&E and General Electric inaugurated the Vallecitos Nuclear Power Plant in Pleasanton California. It was the first privately funded atomic power plant.

http://archive.org/details/FirstPri1957 http://www.energy.ca.gov/nuclear/california.html

1976 – The Project Viking landers passed through superior conjunction at Mars, enabling scientists to begin an experiment that used the landers as transponders. The data collected confirmed the Shapiro Delay, becoming one of the best confirmations of General Relativity we have seen.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1979ApJ…234L.219R

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1932 – The FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (known then only as the Technical Crime Laboratory) officially opened in Washington DC. It’s location was chosen because it had a sink, and its one employee, Agent Charles Appel had to borrow a microscope.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-fbi-crime-lab-opens-its-doors-for-business
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/highlights-of-history/articles/laboratory

1969 – The Apollo 12 command module with its all-Navy crew splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon. Credit goes to the USS Hornet for its second flawless recovery effort.

http://www.uss-hornet.org/history/apollo/

1998 – AOL announced it would purchase Netscape Communications, merging what were then two of the biggest names on the Internet.
http://money.cnn.com/1998/11/24/technology/aol/

2014 – Attackers calling themselves “Guardians Of Peace” hacked into Sony Pictures Entertainment’s internal networks, stealing data, deleting data, and placing a message and an image of a red skeleton on computer desktops throughout the company.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/24/7277451/sony-pictures-paralyzed-by-massive-security-compromise

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1889 – A “nickel-in-the-slot player” was installed at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco, the first jukebox. Up to four people could put in a coin, put on earphones and listen to a record playing on an Edison Class M phonograph.

http://www.americanheritage.com/content/wurlitzer-1015

1963 – At 5:16 PM the BBC premiered its new family science fiction show, Doctor Who, with its first episode, “An Unearthly Child.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/unearthlychild/detail.shtml

2004 – Blizzard launched World of Warcraft, destined to become the largest MMORPG ever made.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/profile.html

2015 – Blue Origin successfully launched its BE-3 rocket carrying an unoccupied New Shepard space capsule to a suborbital height of 100.5 km and landed the used rocket safely on the ground.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/24/blue-origin-reusable-rocket-landing/

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1963 – One of the most famous 8mm home movies ever recorded was filmed on a Model 414 PD Bell and Howell in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. The Zapruder film showed President John F. Kennedy and Governor John Connally being shot.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/11/1122zapruder-films-jfkennedy-assassination/

1995 – The first feature-length film created entirely using computer-generated imagery was released to theaters. Toy Story grossed more than $350 million worldwide, making executive producer Steve Jobs, very happy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114709/

2005 – Microsoft’s Xbox 360 went on sale in North America. The follow-up to the Xbox would become a smash hit.

http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/nov-22-2005-xbox-360-hits-stores-11946797

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