In 1902 – Joe Horn and Frank Hardart opened the first US Automat at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. The waiterless restaurant charged a nickel for most dishes.

In 1931 – Robert Goddard received a patent for rocket-fueled aircraft design (U.S. No. 1,809,271). Sadly we do not have a lot of rocket-planes in operation.

1986 – The Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center opened to support the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET, which linked five supercomputer centers. NSFNET would eventually allow commercial uses and transition to the open Internet.

In 1637 – Rene Descartes published “Discourse on the Method for Guiding One’s Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences”, which formed the basis of the modern scientific method. It’s also the source of the quote “I think, therefore I am.”

In 1949 – George Orwell’s book 1984 was published. The book still affects notions of privacy and inspired the conic Apple commercial that introduced the Macintosh computer.

In 1955 – Tim Berners-Lee was born in London. He grew up to develop the World Wide Web.

In 2008 – Apple announced Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

In 1954 – Computer science hero Alan Turing killed himself by eating an apple containing cyanide. Turing formulated the famous Turing test and broke code at Bletchley park during World War II.

In 1975 – Sony introduced the Betamax video recorder for sale.

In 1980 – The first U.S. solar power plant was dedicated at the Natural Bridge National Monument, Utah.

In 1933 – The world’s first drive-in movie theater opened in Camden, New Jersey. Richard Hollingshead Jr. had developed the system by using a 1928 Kodak projector mounted on the hood of his car and aimed at a screen pinned to some trees.

1984 – Tetris, one of the best-selling video games of all-time, is released. It was invented by a Soviet programmer, Alexei Pazhitnov and popularized by Hank Rogers who bought the rights and distributed it.

In 1995 – The Los Angeles Times reported that Father Leonard Boyle was working to put the Vatican’s library on the World Wide Web through a site funded by IBM.