Today in Tech History – September 20, 2017

1848 – At noon in the library of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, members of the former Association of American Geologists and Naturalists met to create the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

http://archives.aaas.org/exhibit/origins2.php

1954 – John Backus and his team at IBM ran the first FORTRAN program. FORTRAN stands for FORmula TRANslation and was the first high-level language and compiler developed.

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4396778/1st-FORTRAN-program-runs–September-20–1954

1983 – A patent for the RSA Algorithm for public-key cryptography was awarded. RSA stands for Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, who first publicly described it in 1977.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=daEsAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Rsapaper.pdf

2012 – Makerbot Industries released the Replicator 2 3D printer, meant for non-expert users, and providing 100 micron resolution printing. They also announced the opening of a store in Manhattan.

http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2012/09/19/a-whole-new-makerbot-introducing-replicator-2-desktop-3d-printer/

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