Today in Tech History – – July 8, 2018

1908 – Charles Urban demonstrated Kinemacolor, the first successful color motion-picture process, at a scientific meeting in Paris attended by Auguste and Louis Lumière.

http://books.google.com/books?id=JGoLZrIqa_wC&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=july+8+1908+kinemacolor&source=bl&ots=txw5pg8N-G&sig=BXNkiUCZrOEpNgbV01fq80SiEwM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iwGnU6KlFoTZoATB_4KQBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=july%208%201908%20kinemacolor&f=false

1946 – The University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering began a summer school course on computing that inspired the EDSAC, BINAC, and, many other similar computers.

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200208/history.cfm

2011 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on the final Space Shuttle mission.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/space-shuttle-atlantis-final-flight-launches-florida-struggling/story?id=14024251#.T87MB9VYvmI

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Today in Tech History – – July 7, 2018

1752 – Joseph Marie Jacquard was born in Lyon, France. The weaver and inventor created the first programmable power loom and the cards he used to program it would be adapted by Herman Hollerith and others for programming the first computers.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/July/7/

1936 – Henry F. Phillips received patents for a new kind of screw and the screwdriver used with it. Endless numbers of computer cases have been held together by it since.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=MINJAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

1981 – The first solar-powered aircraft, Solar Challenger, flew 163 miles from Corneille-en-Verin Airport north of Paris across the English Channel to Manston Royal Air Force Base south of London, staying aloft 5 hours and 23 minutes.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-054-DFRC.html

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Today in Tech History – – July 6, 2018

1920 – A US Navy F5L seaplane took off from Hampton Roads, Virginia, using a radio compass for the first time. The pilots located and flew to the Battleship Ohio about 94 miles offshore.

http://www.history.navy.mil/today-in-history/july-6.html

1947 – The AK-47 went into production in the Soviet Union– the name stands for Automatic rifle Kalashnikov model of 1947.

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/07/dayintech_0706/

1996 – AOL settled lawsuits in California that accused the company of misleading subscribers about monthly service charges.

https://books.google.com/books?id=8xSECwAAQBAJ&pg=SA4-PA51&lpg=SA4-PA51&dq=july+6+1996+aol&source=bl&ots=-Ld1WBM_Ej&sig=8Vk_JNskkjnxx4VFjboW80Ip_3Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBgPSH-PHbAhVEwlQKHcYrBqMQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=july%206%201996%20aol&f=false

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Today in Tech History – – July 4, 2018

1951 – Bell Labs held a press conference announcing the invention of the junction transistor. Dr. William Shockley was featured at the conference.

http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1951-First.html

1956 – The five-year-old MIT computer Whirlwind added the ability to input data directly with a keyboard. Programmers began to enjoy independence from punch cards.

http://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/July/4/

1996 – Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched a free web email service called HoTMaiL, a play on HTML. Microsoft bought it a year later, and called it Hotmail for years, but it’s now Outlook.com.

http://news.microsoft.com/1999/02/08/msn-hotmail-from-zero-to-30-million-members-in-30-months/

2016 – The Juno space probe survived the high radiation of Jupiter to make a successful orbital insertion and begin a 20-month mission to examine the interior of Jupiter.

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-juno-spacecraft-in-orbit-around-mighty-jupiter

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Today in Tech History – – July 3, 2018

1886 – Karl Benz drove his Patent Motor Wagen on Mannheim’s Ringstraße, reaching a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph) powered by a 0.75-hp one-cylinder four-stroke gasoline engine. It was the first public drive of what is considered the first purpose-built automobile.

https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/classic/history/benz-patent-motor-car/

1998 – Danielle Bunten Berry died of lung cancer. She was a pioneering game designer most famous for creating the multiplayer game M.U.L.E. in 1983.

http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4524

1999 – At the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, Billy Mitchell became the first ever to achieve a perfect score on Pac-Man.

http://funspotnh.com/-Articles/pc-billymitchell.htm

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Today in Tech History – – July 2, 2018

1897 – 23-year-old Guglielmo Marconi received a patent in England for his wireless telegraphy which we now call radio. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. Ltd. was formed a few weeks later.

http://books.google.com/books?id=nKFvnNl9vOEC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=july+2+1897+marconi+patent&source=bl&ots=1NI414s3Yx&sig=GcY7GmafCafXYqNc3fCEDrT2FLg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FmHGT5TTLbPE2QX92pXrAQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=july%202%201897%20marconi%20patent&f=false

1928 – W3XK, owned by the Jenkins Television Corporation, went on the air becoming the first television broadcasting station in the US.

http://online.sfsu.edu/hl/cfj/cfj.W3XK.html

2001 – Bram Cohen first revealed BitTorrent on a Yahoo group called decentralization.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/decentralization/message/3160

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Today in Tech History – – July 1, 2018

1874 – Remington started selling the Sholes and Glidden Typewriter, the first mass-produced typewriter to use the QWERTY layout. 1 and 0 were left off as the lowercase l and upper-case O keys could double for the numbers.

http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=christopher-keep-the-introduction-of-the-sholes-glidden-type-writer-1874

1941 – A 10-second TV commercial for watch and jewelry company Bulova aired at 2:29 PM on NBC-owned WNBT, leading into a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. It was the first legal broadcast TV commercial in the US.

http://mashable.com/2013/08/01/first-tv-commercial-bulova-video/#AJMcFQGtIGqg

1979 – Sony introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2. It weighed 14 ounces, was blue and silver, and had a second earphone jack. It was originally marketed in the US as the Sound-About and in the UK as the Stowaway.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907884,00.html#ixzz1wGwqKzYW

1991 – Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call over a privately operated network to Vice Mayor Kaarina Suonio in Tampere. The Prime Minister used Nokia gear on GSM’s original 900MHz band.

http://www.ericssonhistory.com/changing-the-world/World-leadership/Who-was-first/

1984 – The book Neuromancer by William Gibson was published. The cyberpunk novel would go on to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards. The book is credited with popularizing the term cyberspace and laying out a blueprint for what the World Wide Web would become.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/167670/neuro.html

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Today in Tech History – – June 30, 2018

1945 – The first draft of a Report on the EDVAC was published. It discussed the advantages of using just one large internal memory, in which instructions as well as data could be held.

https://www.wiley.com/legacy/wileychi/wang_archi/supp/appendix_a.pdf

1948 – Bell Labs introduced the point-contact transistor demonstrated by its inventors, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at a press conference in Murray Hill, NJ.

http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1947-invention.html

1948 – The FCC authorization of recording devices in connection with interstate or foreign telephone service went into effect. Users of the service had to be given adequate notice including a tone warning signal at regular intervals.

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-308668A1.pdf

2015 – Apple launched Apple Music, a streaming service for $10 a month along with radio station Beats One.

http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-music-launches-taking-on-spotify/

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Today in Tech History – – June 29, 2018

1975 – Steve Wozniak built the first prototype of the Apple I, the first computer to show letters on the screen as you typed them.

http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Geek-Cult-ebook/dp/B000VUCIZO

1995 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the space station Mir, the first-ever docking of a Shuttle to a Space Station.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/07/shuttle-atlantis-mir-realization-program-goal/

2007 – The Apple iPhone went on sale for the first time.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/29/technology/iphone_launches/index.htm

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Today in Tech History – – June 28, 2018

1928 – Austrian Friedrich Schmiedl launched his first experimental rocket from a balloon 50,000 feet over Graz, Austria. The rocket was not recovered, but later tests were successful leading to rocket delivered mail.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/23/style/stamps-when-the-speed-of-rockets-delivered-the-mail.html

1965 – Officials in the US and Europe conducted the first commercial telephone conversation over satellite Early Bird I. The satellite also began operating for television transmission “live via satellite.”

http://appel.nasa.gov/2010/02/25/ao_1-7_sf_history-html/

1982 – Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo with the famous “blibbet” of horizontal lines in the first O. New packaging, and a comprehensive set of retail dealer support materials came along with the blibbet.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Tina/The-History-of-Microsoft-1982

2011 – Google announced their latest social network attempt. Google + let you put friends in circles and share different things with different circles.

http://readwrite.com/2011/06/28/google_circles_googles_radical_new_social_network

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