In 1906 – Grace Hopper was born. She would rise to the rank of Rear Admiral but be best remembered for popularizing the term “debugging” for hunting down computer errors. She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL.

In 1968 – Computer scientist Douglas Engelbart gave a legendary product demonstration of MLS that would become known as “the mother of all demos.” Among other things it introduced the computer mouse, video conferencing, teleconferencing, hypertext, word processing, hypermedia, object addressing and dynamic file linking, bootstrapping, and a collaborative real-time editor.

In 1987 – Microsoft released Windows 2.0 which among other improvements could run the first Windows versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.

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In 1931 – U.S. Patent No. 1,835,031 for a “concentric conducting system” was awarded to Lloyd Espenschied of Kew Gardens, New York, and Herman A. Affel of Ridgewood, New Jersey, and assigned to the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Coaxial Cable had been patented.

In 1993 – The U.S. secretary of defense declared the GPS system a dual use system that had Initial Operation Capability and opened the Standard Positioning System to civilians, which gave accuracy of 9 meters horizontally.

In 2010 – With the second launch of the SpaceX Dragon, SpaceX became the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.

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In 1963 – The CBS broadcast of the college football game between Army and Navy featured the first use of video instant replay during a sports telecast. Some people got confused and called to complain.

In 1972 – The last Apollo moon mission, Apollo 17 was launched. The crew took the famous Blue Marble picture that now graces desktop background everywhere.

In 1999 – Six months after its birth, Napster is sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. The Industry refuses to settle, thus insuring that digital music sales will remain low for years to come.

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In 1877 – Thomas Edison tested out his new invention, the phonograph, be recording the first lines of the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb” He recreated the event in 1927.

In 1957 – Responding to Sputnik, the United States launched the Vanguard TV3. The rocket only made it a little over a meter off the launchpad before it fell back and was destroyed. A fuel leak was thought to have caused the failure.

In 2006 – NASA revealed photographs from the Martian Global Surveyor, of two craters called Terra Sirenum and Centauri Montes which appeared to show the evidence that water existed on the surface Mars, as recently as five years before.

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