1870 – The US Weather Bureau (someday to become the National Weather Service) issued its first weather warning for a storm on the Great Lakes. It was accurate, but there was no high-pitched beep yet.

1887 – German immigrant Emile Berliner patented a successful system of sound recording that used flat disks instead of cylinders. The first versions were made of glass. Talk about your broken records.

1895 – German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen, working in his lab in Wurzburg noticed a strange effect while studying vacuum tubes covered in black cardboard. He eventually saw his own skeleton and went on to publish a paper “On a new kind of rays.” The rays would end up being called X-Rays.

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1960 – The JOSS (Johniac Open Shop System) conversational time-sharing service began on the Rand Corporation’s Johnniac computer. Time sharing reduced the time programmers had to wait after turning in their punch cards.

1994 – University of North Carolina student radio station WXYC began what is considered the world’s first Internet radio broadcast. DJ Michael Shoffner set it up. The simulcast continues today.

1996 – NASA launched the Mars global surveyor, humanity’s return to Mars after a 10-year absence. The mission discovered much about the Geology of the planet.

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1928 – The New York Times began flashing headlines outside its offices in Times Square using an electronic sign that wrapped around the 4th floor called the Motograph News Bulletin.

1935 – Edwin Armstrong presented his paper “A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation” to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers, braving the skepticism of AT&T’s John Renshaw Carson who wrote previously that FM radio had no particular advantages over AM.

1980 – Microsoft signed a contract with IBM to create an operating system for the new IBM PC. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer had convinced the heritage tech company that the two were not only talented enough to pull it off, but that they should be paid a royalty on the software.

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1895 – The US Patent office granted George B. Selden the US patent for his road engine, often considered the first car. He made good money licensing the patent, until Henry Ford crushed him in court. Hence the reason none of us drive Seldens.

1994 – Ken McCarthy of the Internet Gazette along with Marc Andreessen of the brand new Netscape (still called Mosaic Communications Corp) and Mark Graham held the first conference to focus on the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.

2007 – China’s first lunar satellite, the Chang’e 1 went into orbit around the Moon. The spacecraft operated until March 2009.

2007 – The Open Handset Alliance introduced a little something called the Android operating system for mobile phones. Few people expected it to seriously challenge the dominance of Blackberry and Palm.

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1879 – James Jacob Ritty patented the first cash register as “Ritty’s Incorruptible Cashier”. He was motivated to invent it by the no-good thieving employees at his saloon.

1939 – Packard Motor Co. exhibited the first air-conditioned automobile at the 40th Automobile Show in Chicago, Illinois.

1952 – Fresh off census duty, the UNIVAC computer projected General Dwight David Eisenhower would defeat Adlai Stevenson for President of the US. All the polls showed Stevenson had a clear advantage so CBS delayed using the projection fearing inaccuracy.

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1957 – The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2 carrying the first animal ever to enter orbit, a dog named Laika. It would go on to inspire the saddest Jonathan Coulton song ever, “Space Doggity” and the band Laika and the Cosmonauts.

1973 – NASA launched Mariner 10 towards Mercury. It would become the first space probe to reach the planet.

1992 – Tim Berners-Lee posted a page describing the World Wide Web. It’s the oldest page still served on the Web.

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1815 – George Boole was born in Lincolnshire, England AND he became a mathematician who laid down the foundations for Boolean logic XOR Boolean Algebra. Search engine power users everywhere thank him.

1920 – KDKA in Pittsburgh started broadcasting as the first commercial radio station in the US. The first broadcast? Election results. Actual results, not projections.

1936 – BBC Television Service went on the air with the world’s first regular “high definition” service. Back then high definition meant 200 lines not 1080. The channel became BBC One in 1964.

1988 – The Morris Worm began replicating across 6,000 computers causing slow systems and proving difficult to eradicate. 24-year-old Robert Tappan Morris Jr. at MIT had created the worm in order to see how many computers were hooked up to the Internet.

2015 – Hewlett-Packard split into two companies. HPE handled enterprise services and traded under the stock ticker HPE. HP Inc. kept the PC and printer business and the stock ticker HP.

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1870 – The United States Weather Bureau (now known as the National Weather Service) made its first actual weather report. 24 observers sent reports by telegram to Washington DC.

1963 – The largest radio telescope ever constructed, the Arecibo observatory opened in Arecibo Puerto Rico. It would be used for many major discoveries including the first direct imaging of an asteroid.

1968 – The MPAA and 2 other industry organizations introduced the voluntary ratings system. G meant good for all ages, M meant mature audiences, R was restricted and X… well you know what X means. It would serve as a model for future voluntary systems like that used by the video game industry.

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2000 – The Soyuz TM-31 launched, carrying Expedition 1 the first resident crew to the International Space Station, including Yuri Gidzenko, Sergei Krikalev and William Shepherd. The TM-31 was used as the crew’s lifeboat while on the station.

2000 – Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) and Napster agreed to develop a service for swapping and sharing music. The service never materialized.

2007 – Nintendo of Japan finally ended support for the repair of FamiCom game consoles, the Japanese name for NES, citing a shortage of parts. End of an 8-bit era.

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