Today in Tech History – November 12, 2017

1946 – The US Army held a contest between an abacus used by Kiyoshi Matsuzaki from Japan’s postal ministry and an electric calculator operated by Private Thomas Nathan Wood. The abacus won 4 to 1.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/11/1112abacus-beats-calculator/

1970 – The Oregon Highway Divisions made an ill-advised attempt to destroy a dead whale by blowing it up with explosives. The results, documented by local news, eventually became Internet gold as the “exploding whale” video.
http://www.offbeatoregon.com/H001_ExplodWhale.html

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee published a formal proposal for a hypertext project. The proposal referred to a “web of information nodes” and implementing “browsers” The project eventually became the World Wide Web.

http://www.w3.org/Proposal

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.