Today in Tech History – May 23, 2017

1825 – William Sturgeon exhibited the electromagnet in a practical form for the first time. The exhibition accompanied the reading of a paper, recorded in the Transactions of the Society of Arts for 1825 (Vol xliii, p.38).

1908 – John Bardeen was born. He grew up to win the Nobel Prize twice, once for inventing the transistor, and once for figuring out superconductivity.

1995 – Sun Microsystems Inc. announced the programming language Java and the accompanying Web browser HotJava at the SunWorld ’95 convention.

2002 – Netflix began selling its stock publicly on the NASDAQ. It rose from it’s initial price, unusual for the time when tech company stocks were generally in poor shape.

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