Today in Tech History – July 8, 2016

Today in Tech History logo1908 – Charles Urban demonstrated Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion-picture process, at a scientific meeting in Paris attended by Auguste and Louis Lumière.

1946 – The University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering began a summer school course on computing that inspired the EDSAC, BINAC, and, many other similar computers.

2011 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on the final Space Shuttle mission.

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Today in Tech History – July 7, 2016

Today in Tech History logo1752 – Joseph Marie Jacquard was born in Lyon, France. The weaver and inventor created the first programmable power loom and the cards he used to program it would be adapted by Herman Hollerith and others for programming the first computers.

1936 – Henry F. Phillips received patents for a new kind of screw and the screwdriver used with it. Endless numbers of computer cases have been held together by it since.

1981 – The first solar-powered aircraft, Solar Challenger, flew 163 miles from Corneille-en-Verin Airport north of Paris across the English Channel to Manston Royal Air Force Base south of London, staying aloft 5 hours and 23 minutes.

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Today in Tech History – July 6, 2016

20140404-073853.jpg1920 – A US Navy F5L seaplane took off from Hampton Roads, Virginia, using a radio compass for the first time. The pilots located and flew to the Battleship Ohio about 94 miles offshore.

1947 – The AK-47 went into production in the Soviet Union– the name stands for Automatic rifle Kalashnikov model of 1947.

1996 – AOL settled lawsuits in California that accused the company of misleading subscribers about monthly service charges.

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Today in Tech History – July 5, 2016

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1833 – Nicéphore Niépce died. He created the first permanent photograph in 1826– an image of the outside of his house.

1954 – The BBC broadcast its first daily television news bulletin. Richard Baker read the 20-minute bulletin billed as an “Illustrated summary of the news.”

1963 – Radio station WWVB began broadcasting standard frequencies in Fort Collins, Colorado for use by satellite and missile programs. Its time code was later used for synchronizing power plants and coordinating telephone networks and eventually for setting alarm clocks.

1994 – Jeff Bezos founded online book seller Amazon in Bellevue, Washington. It would eventually sell more than just books.

2001 – Rob Flickenger and friends posted details of their now legendary 12db Pringles-can antenna to boost WiFi signal distance.

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Today in Tech History – July 4, 2016

Today in Tech History logo1951 – Bell Labs held a press conference announcing the invention of the junction transistor. Dr. William Shockley was featured at the conference.

1956 – The five-year-old MIT computer Whirlwind added the ability to input data directly with a keyboard. Programmers began to enjoy independence from punch cards.

1996 – Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched a free web email service called HoTMaiL, a play on HTML. Microsoft bought it a year later, and called it Hotmail for years, but it’s now Outlook.com.

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Today in Tech History – July 3, 2016

Today in Tech History logo1886 – Karl Benz drove his Patent Motor Wagen on Mannheim’s Ringstraße, reaching a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph) powered by a 0.75-hp one-cylinder four-stroke gasoline engine. It was the first public drive of what is considered the first purpose-built automobile.

1998 – Danielle Bunten Berry died of lung cancer. She was a pioneering game designer most famous for creating the multiplayer game M.U.L.E. in 1983.

1999 – At the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, Billy Mitchell became the first ever to achieve a perfect score on Pac-Man.

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Today in Tech History – July 2, 2016

1897 – 23-year-old Guglielmo Marconi received a patent in England for his wireless telegraphy which we now call radio. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. Ltd. was formed a few weeks later.

1928 – W3XK, owned by the Jenkins Television Corporation, went on the air becoming the first television broadcasting station in the US.

2001 – Bram Cohen first revealed BitTorrent on a Yahoo group called decentralization.

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Today in Tech History – July 1, 2016

1979 – Sony introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2. It weighed 14 ounces, was blue and silver, and had a second earphone jack. It was originally marketed in the US as the Sound-About and in the UK as the Stowaway.

1991 – Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call over a privately operated network to Vice Mayor Kaarina Suonio in Tampere. The Prime Minister used Nokia gear on GSM’s original 900MHz band.

1984 – The book Neuromancer by William Gibson was published. The cyberpunk novel would go on to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards. The book is credited with popularizing the term cyberspace and laying out a blueprint for what the World Wide Web would become.

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Today in Tech History – June 30, 2016

Today in Tech History logo1945 – The first draft of a Report on the EDVAC was published. It discussed the advantages of using just one large internal memory, in which instructions as well as data could be held.

1948 – Bell Labs introduced the point-contact transistor demonstrated by its inventors, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at a press conference in Murray Hill, NJ.

1948 – The FCC authorization of recording devices in connection with interstate or foreign telephone service went into effect. Users of the service had to be given adequate notice including a tone warning signal at regular intervals.

2015 – Apple launched Apple Music, a streaming service for $10 a month along with radio station Beats One.

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