1893 – Germany’s Imperial Patent Office granted Rudolph Diesel Patent No. 67207 for “a new efficient thermal engine”. We just call it, the Diesel engine.

1927 – US President Calvin Coolidge signed Public Law no. 632 establishing the Federal Radio Commission which was later replaced by the Federal Communications Commission.

1927 – German physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to Wolfgang Pauli, describing the uncertainty principle for the first time. He submitted a paper on the principle for publication the following March.

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1857 – Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany. Hertz made key discoveries in optics but also transmitted and received electromagnetic waves and gave his name to the common unit of frequency, Hz.

1995 – Chicago stockbroker Steve Fossett completed the first hot air balloon flight over the Pacific Ocean. At 9600 km it was also the longest balloon flight.

1995 – US President Clinton signed an Executive Order directing the declassification of intelligence imagery acquired by the CORONA, ARGON and LANYARD US photo-reconnaissance satellites. More than 860,000 images of the Earth’s surface, collected between 1960 and 1972 were made public.

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1937- Waldo Waterman flew the first test flight of the Arrowbile, and found the aircraft easy to fly and virtually spin and stall proof. It is considered the first successful flying car to actually fly.

1947 – Edwin H. Land demonstrated his one-step instant camera and film at a meeting of the Optical Society of America. The first Polaroid camera was on sale within two years.

1986 – The Legend of Zelda, the first in the ongoing series, was released in Japan for Nintendo’s Famicom console.

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1900 – John F. Pickering of Haiti received a US patent for his design of an airship.

1962 – Following the USSR, the United States put its first man into orbit. John Glenn piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 Friendship 7 spacecraft to a successful conclusion of the mission.

1986 – A Soviet Proton launcher boosted the base block of the Mir space station into orbit.

2004 – Apple’s first iPod Mini arrived in Apple retail stores and online. It was the first size variation of the iPod.

2013 – Sony announced the PlayStation 4 without giving out price or even showing what the hardware would look like.

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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.”

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.

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

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

2014 – Facebook announced it was acquiring messaging app WhatsApp for $19 billion.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

1946 – A few days after its first public demonstration, the first practical all-digital computer, ENIAC was formally dedicated.

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.

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.

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

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.

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