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.

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.

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.

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.

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

1982 – In a posting made at 11:44 AM, Professor Scott Fahlman first proposed using the characters 🙂 to indicate jokes on a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University. In the same post he suggested :-(.

1989 – About 100 hospitals that used software from Shared Medical Systems saw their computers go into a loop when the date was entered. The day was 32,768 days from January 1, 1900, which caused a system overflow.

1995 – International Talk Like a Pirate Day was first celebrated by John Baur (Ol’ Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap’n Slappy), of Albany, Oregon. They had come up with the idea on June 6th while playing racquetball, but that was D-Day. The 19th was Summers’ ex-wife’s birthday, and the only day he could reliably remember.

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

1830 – America’s first native locomotive, the “Tom Thumb” lost a race to a draft horse at Ellicotts Mills, Maryland.

1927 – The Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System went on the air with 47 radio stations. Within two years it would be sold and become the Columbia Broadcasting System and later simply CBS.

1998 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers aka ICANN was created in order to take over Internet administrative tasks from the US Government. The most famous of those tasks is overseeing the Domain Name System.

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

1822 – Jean-François Champollion, permanent secretary of the French Académie des Inscriptions, presented his Lettre a M. Dacier, describing his solution to the mystery of the Hieroglyphic inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone. A nifty bit of decryption.

1991 – The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) was posted to a Finnish FTP server in Helsinki. Originator Linus Torvalds wanted to call the OS FreaX, but the FTP admin didn’t like the name and renamed it Linux.

2007 – AOL announced plans to refocus the company on advertising and relocate its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Virginia to New York City.

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

1890 – Louis Le Prince boarded a train to Paris at Dijon station. Neither he nor his bags ever arrived and his disappearance was never solved. In 188 he had patented a system for taking 16 pictures a second and playing them back as a moving picture.

1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, was introduced at the Sherry-Netherland hotel in New York City. One of them caught fire. The demo that was carried live on television did not catch fire.

1985 – Steve Jobs spent his last day as an employee of Apple after submitting his resignation to the board.

1997 – After purchasing NeXT the previous December, bringing Steve Jobs back to the company, the Apple Board named Jobs as interim CEO, replacing Gil Amelio.

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

1947 – The Association for Computing Machinery was founded as the Eastern Association for Computing Machinery, during a meeting at Columbia University in New York. It developed into the world’s largest organization of computer professionals.

1947 – RCA released the 12AX7 vacuum tube for public sale. The miniature dual triode vacuum tube with high voltage gain became popular with tube amplifier enthusiasts and has been in continuous production since. The tube is also known as the ECC83 in the European Union.

2008 – Electronics retailer Best Buy acquired the Napster music service for $121 million, preventing the once dominating music-sharing service from going out of business.

2014 – Microsoft announced they would purchase Mojang, makers of the Minecraft universe. Mojang’s founders, Notch, Carl, and Jakob, announced they would leave the company.

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

1959 – After 33.5 hours of flight, Luna 2 became the first human-made object to strike the moon.

2000 – Microsoft released Windows ME. The ME stood for Millenium Edition but deserving or not, would eventually become code for a bad or unnecessary OS update.

2001 – The Nintendo GameCube went on sale in Japan. It was the first Nintendo game console that did not use cartridges.

2015 – The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, LIGO, detected gravitational waves of two merging black holes. It was the first direct observation of gravitational waves.

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

1983 – Osborne Computer declared bankruptcy in Oakland, California federal bankruptcy court, listing assets of $40 million, liabilities of $45 million, and 600 creditors. Two years earlier, Osborne had produced the first portable computer, the 24-pound Osborne I.

1985 – Nintendo released Super Mario Brothers in Japan. It became the best selling video game for 20 years until it was surpassed by Wii Sports.

2000 – The public beta of Apple’s Mac OS X, code named Kodiak, was released. Users had to pay $29.95 for the beta.

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

1962 – US President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at the stadium of Rice University, declaring “We choose to go to the moon.” Many consider the speech the beginning of the space race.

1985 – Steve Jobs announced to the Apple board that he would resign. Jobs said, “I’ve been thinking a lot, and it’s time for me to get on with my life. It’s obvious that I’ve got to do something. I’m 30 years old.”

1994 – Mosaic Communications introduced its first software, the Mosaic NetScape network navigator and the Mosaic Netsite server line.

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

1928 – Radio station WGY of General Electric made the first simulcast in Schenectady, New York. A play called “The Queen’s Messenger” had its audio broadcast over radio with the picture in sync over television at same time.

1985 – ISEE-3, renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE), flew through the gas tail of comet P/Giacobini-Zinner.

1998 – The US Congress released the contents of the Starr report on the Internet. The report led to the impeachment, but not the removal, of President Clinton. The websites that hosted the report were slammed with traffic.

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