Today in Tech History – June 2, 2014

In 1883 – Thomas Edison and Stephen D. Field built the world’s first elevated electric railway. It was a narrow-gauge 3-foot-wide track in the gallery around the edge of the main exhibition building of the Chicago Railway Exhibition. It ran nine miles per hour.

In 1896 – Guglielmo Marconi applied for British Patent number 12039 regarding a system of telegraphy using Hertzian waves. We’d call it radio.

In 2003 – The European Space Agency launched the Mars Express probe from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. It was the fastest planetary probe to be built.

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