1877 – In a letter to T.B.A. David, president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh, Thomas Edison suggested using the word ‘hello’ to indicate a telephone connection was active. Alexander Graham Bell had reportedly preferred ‘Ahoy’ as the greeting.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/05/garden/great-hello-mystery-is-solved.html
1960 – A long-distance phone link was tested using the Echo 1 satellite. William Victor placed a call from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Goldstone, California to William C. Jakes Jr. at the Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, bouncing off the satellite to make the connection.
http://todayinsci.com/8/8_15.htm
1994 – Microsoft programmer Benjamin Slivka sent an email to his team suggesting they make a Web browser for Windows 95.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1996-07-14/inside-microsoft
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.