1877 – Thomas Edison announced his invention of the phonograph, a machine that could record and play sound.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/edisons-first-great-invention
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edcyldr.html

1905 – The Annalen Der Physik published Albert Einstein’s paper, entitled “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?” The paper revealed the relationship between energy and mass. You know the relationship as E = mc².

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4401906/Einstein-paper-outlines-E-mc2–November-21–1905
http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/annalen/history/einstein-papers/1905_18_639-641.pdf

1969 The first permanent ARPANET link was established between the Interface Message Processor or IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/November/21/

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1984 – The SETI Institute, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence was founded by Thomas Pierson (CEO), and Dr. Jill Tarter. No luck so far, but they keep looking.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/3992/November-20-SETI-Institute-is-founded

1985 – Microsoft finally released Version 1.0 of Windows. It was considered slightly inferior to competitors like DESQview and the Macintosh.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/History/The-History-of-Microsoft-1985

1998 – The first module of the International Space Station launched. Zarya, also called the Functional Cargo Block, provided electrical power, storage and propulsion. It’s now consigned to being used for storage.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenews/reports/issreports/1998/iss3.html

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1872 – E.D. Barbour of Boston, Mass. received the first US patent for an adding machine capable of printing totals and subtotals. The so-called “calculating machine,” proved impractical.

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

1967 – Hong Kong TV, the first free over the air commercial television station in Hong Kong was established. Today it is known as TVB.

http://www.tvb.com/info/faq/e_corporation.html

1981 – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos banned video games, citing such insidious examples as Space Invaders and Asteroids as a “destructive social enemy, the electrical bandit.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=pq6-X1fTm2oC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=november+19+1981+marcos+bans+videogames&source=bl&ots=oQwRvtTza1&sig=5IoZotCSlAzF0Ha10SJWGAT0gUo&hl=en#v=onepage&q=november%2019%201981%20marcos%20bans%20videogames&f=false

2006 – The Nintendo Wii launched in North America.

http://www.cnet.com/news/nintendo-wii-release-details-nov-19-250-with-a-game-included/

2007 – Amazon launched an e-reader called the Kindle that used an e-ink screen. The device had built-in free Internet connectivity and sold for $399.
http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-debuts-kindle-e-book-reader/

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1883 – US and Canadian railways adopted five standardized time zones to replace the multitude of local times scattered across North America. It was called “The Day of Two Noons” as each railroad station clock was reset as standard-time noon was reached within each time zone.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/railroads-create-the-first-time-zones

1928 – Steamboat Willie premiered at Universal’s Colony Theater in New York City. It was the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was also the first official appearance of Mickey Mouse. Happy birthday Mickey, now give us back a reasonable public domain date.

http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=89284

1977 – A startup called Microsoft, fresh off developing its own version of FORTRAN, won the right in arbitration to license its version of BASIC, previously licensed exclusively through MITS, makers of the Altair.

http://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm

2012 – The Nintendo Wii U launched in North America. The console did not yet feature it TVii service but did require a 5GB download which took over an hour to update the console’s software.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/nov/19/wii-u-launch-us-problems

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1790 – August Ferdinand Mobius was born in Schulpforta, Saxony. The mathematician, astronomer and physicist is most well remembered for the discovery of the Mobius strip, a 2-dimensional object with only one side when embedded in 3D space. Poor Johann Benedict Listing also discovered it at the same time but Listing strip just doesn’t have the same ring.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Mobius.html

1947 – Walter Brattain dumped a semiconductor experiment into a thermos of water and unexpectedly saw a large amplification of electricity. Working with John Bardeen they developed it into a new amplifier that would eventually be called the transistor.

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

1970 – The Soviet Union landed Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium on the Moon. It was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/archives/538-Lunokhod-1-Revisited.html

1971 – The Kenbak-1 desktop computer was advertised for sale in ComputerWorld for $750 It had first been advertised in Scientific American in September. The 8-bit computer had 256 bytes of memory and was dubbed the world’s first commercially available personal computer by a panel of experts involving Steve Wozniak.

https://books.google.com/books?id=wCl2yLDv2bAC&pg=PT42&dq=Kenbak-1&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bEPqTsXUG4GwiQKO1sC-BA&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Kenbak-1&f=false
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34639183

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1904 – Sir John Ambrose Fleming went “scudding down Gower Street” in London on his way to patenting the “oscillation valve” which we fondly call the Vacuum Tube. His patent was later invalidated by the US supreme court, but that didn’t stop Fleming from being Knighted and receiving a medal of honor from the Institute of Radio Engineers.

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4401607/Fleming-patents-vacuum-tube–November-16–1904
http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/radio_history/gtnames/fleming.php

1965 – The Soviet Union launched the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus. It would become the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet, though it failed to return data.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1965-092A

2000 – ICANN announced its decision to include 7 new top-level domains giving birth to the .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name and .pro, TLDs.

http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/icann-pr-16nov00-en.htm

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1926 – The National Broadcasting Company radio network opened with 24 stations. It was a joint creation of RCA, General Electric and Westinghouse. AT&T provided the spark for the network by selling WEAF to RCA.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/404533/National-Broadcasting-Co-Inc-NBC

1971 – Intel released the world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004 with an advertisement in Electronic News, though the chip may have been delivered earlier in the spring to some customers. It was the first complete CPU on one chip.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/museum-story-of-intel-4004.html

2001 – Microsoft entered the game console war with the first Xbox going on sale in North America. It pitted Microsoft against Sony’s PS2 just three days before Nintendo’s GameCube went on sale.
http://money.cnn.com/2001/11/15/technology/xbox/index.htm

2013 – Sony’s PlayStation 4 game console went on sale with a big event in New York where Sony rented out the entire Standard Hotel.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/14/sony-launches-playstation-4-fans-go-nuts/

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1922 – The BBC sent its first daily transmission from station 2LO at Marconi House London. Arthur Burrows, first Director of Programmes, read the first newscast.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/aboutbbcnews/spl/hi/history/noflash/html/1920s.stm

1971 – The American space probe Mariner 9 began orbiting Mars becoming the first spacecraft to successfully orbit another planet.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1971-051A

2007 – The last Direct Current electrical distribution system in the US was shut down by Con Edison in New York.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/off-goes-the-power-current-started-by-thomas-edison/

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1851 – The first public message was sent on the submarine telegraph cable under the English Channel between Dover, England and Calais, France.

http://books.google.com/books?id=6nM0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=november+13+1851+submarine+telegraph&source=bl&ots=71yU-Y_Dva&sig=mZmBJzfqw9fKkwaYU-4xVL_v-5k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XZJ6UvetBMGRiAL1noGIBA&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=november%2013%201851%20submarine%20telegraph&f=false

1982 – 15-year-old Scott Safran of Cherry Hill, New Jersey set the world record score on Asteroids. His record stood for 27 years, the longest-running high score in videogame history.

https://www.wired.com/2010/04/asteroids-record/

1983 – The MIT TX-0, an experimental transistorized computer, was brought back to life for the last time at The Computer Museum in Marlboro, Massachusetts.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/November/13/

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1946 – The US Army held a contest between an abacus used by Kiyoshi Matsuzaki from Japan’s postal ministry and an electric calculator operated by Private Thomas Nathan Wood. The abacus won 4 to 1.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/11/1112abacus-beats-calculator/

1970 – The Oregon Highway Divisions made an ill-advised attempt to destroy a dead whale by blowing it up with explosives. The results, documented by local news, eventually became Internet gold as the “exploding whale” video.
http://www.offbeatoregon.com/H001_ExplodWhale.html

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee published a formal proposal for a hypertext project. The proposal referred to a “web of information nodes” and implementing “browsers” The project eventually became the World Wide Web.

http://www.w3.org/Proposal

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