In 1955 – Doug Ross demonstrated the Director tape for MIT’s Whirlwind machine, the first digital computer with real-time text and graphics. The idea of the Director Tape was to allow multiple problems to be read by the computer in one session without humans having to intervene and change tapes. In other words, an operating system.

In 1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, was transmitted on BBC Radio 4. Some credit Adams with accidentally predicting the PDA and smartphone.

In 1979 – Philips publicly demonstrated a prototype of an optical digital audio disc at a press conference called “Philips Introduces Compact Disc.”

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In 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell received a US patent for an “Improvement in Telegraphy” (No.174,465) which established the principle of bidirectional signals that made the telephone possible.

In 1926 – The first successful Transatlantic telephone call was placed between New York City and London. Transatlantic service began the following year at $75 a minute.

In 1994 – The Supreme Court found that 2 Live Crew’s parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh Pretty Woman” was fair use, and not a violation of copyright, thus ensuring the future of The Onion.

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In 1937 – Valentina Tereshkova was born in the Yaroslavl region of Russia. She would grow up to become the first woman in space and only woman ever to fly solo in space.

In 1992 – The first media-hyped computer virus reached fever pitch as the Michelangelo boot sector virus began to affect computers. Worldwide catastrophe did not follow.

In 2009 – NASA launched the Kepler space observatory, with a mission to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

In 2012 – Google consolidated its various online stores, Android Market, Google Books, Google Music, and Google video, into one store called Google Play.

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In 1975 – The Homebrew Computer Club, held its first meeting in the garage of Gordon French in Menlo Park, California. 32 people showed up for the first meeting. John Draper, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were some of the more famous members of the club.

In 1981 – The ZX81 was launched by Sinclair Research in Britain for £69.95 and would go on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world. It was much more successful than it’s predecessor the ZX80.

In 1982 – Four days after it’s twin, the second of two Soviet probes to Venus, the Venera 14 landed on the planet. Venera 13 and 14 would continue to send data until 1983.

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In 1976 – The first Freon-cooled Cray-1 supercomputer was shipped to Los Alamos Laboratories, in New Mexico at a cost of $19,000,000.

In 2000 – The Sony PlayStation 2 went on sale in Japan.

In 2007 – Election Day was held in Estonia, and for the first time in the world, voters were allowed to vote on the Internet. Approximately 30,000 voters took advantage of electronic voting. Ballots had to be completed three days before election day.

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In 1847 – In Edinburgh, Scotland, an expert in vocal physiology and elocution welcomed his newborn son into the world. He was named after his father. Alexander Graham Bell would go on to become synonymous with the telephone.

In 1885 – The American Telephone and Telegraph Company was incorporated in New York State as a subsidiary of American Bell Telephone.

In 1966 – The BBC announced plans to begin broadcasting television programmes in colour the following year, becoming the first European broadcaster to provide regular colour broadcasts.

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In 1908 – Gabriel Lippman proposed using a series of lenses at a picture’s surface instead of opaque barrier lines, allowing three dimensional pictures. He titled his presentation to the French Academy of Sciences “La Photographie Integral”.

In 1983 – CBS Records launched the first major compact disc music marketing campaign, launching 16 titles. CDs had gone on sale to the public the previous October in Japan.

In 2004 – Review site Engadget launched with a post about T-Flash, a new memory card format, by founder Peter Rojas.

In 2010 – The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany rejected legislation requiring electronic communications traffic data retention for a period of 6 months as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.

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In 1896 – Henri Becquerel discovered images of uranium rocks had appeared on a photographic plate without exposure to the sun. He had discovered natural radiation.

In 1995 – A little over a year after starting the website in January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo incorporated Yahoo!

In 2006 – English-language Wikipedia reached its one millionth article, “Jordanhill railway station.”

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In 1891 – David Sarnoff was born near Minsk. He would go on to befriend Marconi and rise to the Presidency of RCA and be integral in founding NBC.

In 1932 – English physicist James Chadwick published a letter on the existence of the neutron, some say giving birth to modern nuclear physics.

In 1986 – The United States Senate voted to allow its debates to be televised on a trial basis. The trial was successful.

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In 1896 – Hoping to test the sun’s ability to create X-rays, Henri Becquerel placed a wrapped photographic plate in a closed desk drawer, with phosphorescent uranium rocks laid on top. He left it in the drawer for several days until the sun came out. It was cloudy.

In 1909 – The first successful color motion picture process, Kinemacolor, was shown to the general public at the Palace Theatre in London.

In 1935 – Scottish physicist Robert Watson-Watt demonstrated Radio Detection And Ranging to Air Ministry officials at Daventry, England. This RADAR proved quite helpful a few years later when war broke out.

In 2015 – The US FCC voted 3-2 to implement new Open Internet Rules and classify Internet Service Providers as telecommunications services under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.

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