1877 – Thomas Edison sketched his idea for the phonograph, and may have even completed a model. The first working model wasn’t completed until December 6.

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/recon/jb_recon_phongrph_1.html

1960 – The first NASA communications satellite, Echo 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral. The satellite was a balloon of mylar polyester film.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/masterCatalog.do?sc=1960-009A

1977 – The space shuttle Enterprise carried out its first free flight test, when the orbiter was released from the back of a 747 in flight.

http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/aug-12-1977-shuttle-enterprise-test-9563114

1981 – IBM introduced the model 5150 personal computer. It had a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor and used Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_birth.html

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1942 – Hedy Markey and composer George Antheil received a US patent for a frequency-hopping device. The technique has led to many advancements in wireless technology including Wi-Fi. Markey was better known under her stage name of Hedy Lamarr.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=R4BYAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

1950 – Steve Wozniak was born in San Jose, California. He would grow up to invent the first successful personal computer, and revolutionize desktop computing.

http://mashable.com/category/steve-wozniak/

1965 – Shinji Mikami was born in Japan. He grew up to become a video game designer for Capcom, revolutionizing survival-horror games with his popular series, Resident Evil.

https://www.giantbomb.com/shinji-mikami/3040-32999/

1994 – Net Market founder Dan Kohn watched his friend buy a Sting CD online from Net Market using his credit card. This is sometimes considered the first ecommerce transaction.

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2015/11/26/the-first-ecommerce-transaction-wasnt-a-pizza-hut-pizza-or-weed-it-was-a-sting-cd/

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1859 – US Patent no. 25,076 was issued to Nathan Ames of Saugus, Mass. for the first escalator-type moving staircase.

http://www.google.com/patents/US25076

1927 – Computer pioneer Marvin Minsky was born in New York City. Minsky grew up to become a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence research and wrote the book “The Society of Mind.”

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/384568/Marvin-Minsky

1995 – Netscape Communications staged an IPO. Shares opened at $28 and shot up to $75 per share in one day, becoming one of the indicators of the beginning of the dot-com boom.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4792365

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1876 – Thomas Edison received a US patent for a mimeograph, which combined with an invention by A. B. Dick led to the first widely successful mimeograph machine.

http://museumofprinting.org/pdfs/MOPWinter07.pdf

1908 – For the first time in public, Wilbur Wright showed off the Wright Brothers’ flying machine at the racecourse in Le Mans, France. French doubts about the Wright Brothers’ claims to flight were put to rest for the time being.

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/1908-the-year-the-airplane-went-public-8791602/?no-ist

2007 – Barbara Morgan became the first educator to safely reach space on the US. Space Shuttle Endeavour.

http://idahoptv.org/productions/specials/barbaramorgan/2007Aug8.cfm

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1943 – Jon Postel was born in Altadena, California. He created the Internet’s address system, and administered it for 30 years as director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/grants-and-awards/awards/postel-service-award/ten-year-tribute-jon-postel

1963 – Skilled hacker, future government prisoner, and eventual famous security expert Kevin Mitnick was born in Van Nuys, California.

http://www.nndb.com/people/448/000022382/

1991 – Tim Berners-Lee posted a short summary of his WorldWideWeb Project to alt.hypertext and pointed to a simple browser and a Web page describing the project. Thus the WWW became a publicly available service on the Internet.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/alt.hypertext/eCTkkOoWTAY/bJGhZyooXzkJ

1997 – At MacWorld in Boston, Microsoft announced it would invest $150 million in Apple, and continue to make Microsoft Office for Mac for at least five years. The two companies also ended their lawsuit.

https://news.microsoft.com/1997/08/06/microsoft-and-apple-affirm-commitment-to-build-next-generation-software-for-macintosh/

2014 – The European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe became the first spacecraft to maneuver alongside a speeding body as it caught up with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28659783

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1858 – The west end of the first transatlantic cable was completed when the ship Niagara anchored at the Newfoundland coast having laid 1,016 miles of telegraph cable.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-transatlantic-telegraph-cable-completed

1914 – The American Traffic Signal Co. installed their first electric traffic light at East 105th street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.

http://allthingsclevelandohio.blogspot.com/2008/03/cleveland-birthplace-of-first-electric.html

1921 – The first radio broadcast of a baseball game happened on KDKA from Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. Harold W. Arlin announced the game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Philadelphia Phillies.

http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/Recommendations/KDKAFirst1921.htm

2011 – The Juno space probe launched on a mission to explore Jupiter.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/overview/index.html

2012 – The Mars Science Laboratory, known as the Curiosity Rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars in one of the most complicated automated landings ever, involving a sky crane.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/mars-curiosity-rover-lands-successfully-mars/story?id=16934302#.UeHYyz54Zvg

2014 – Justin.TV announced its closure. It had started as a lifecasting channel for Justin Kan and spawned the massively successful Twitch video game streaming channel.

http://gigaom.com/2014/08/05/live-streaming-pioneer-justin-tv-shuts-down-as-company-focuses-on-twitch/

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1921 – The first facsimile was transmitted by radio across the Atlantic Ocean using the Belinograph invented by Edouard Belin. A message written by C. V. Van Anda, managing editor of The New York Times and addressed to the Matin in Paris, was sent in seven minutes.

http://todayinsci.com/B/Belin_Edouard/Belinogram1921-NYT.htm

1988 – A computer halted an engine test in preparation for the launch of the space shuttle Discovery. The flight would be the first since the Challenger explosion in 1986.

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

2007 – NASA’s Phoenix spaceship launched on its mission to survey the Martian Arctic in search of water, geological discoveries, and evidence of conditions for biological life.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/launch/index.html

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1811 – Elisha Otis was born. He invented a safety brake that prevented elevators from falling if the hoisting cable broke. Thank him every time you get in an elevator.

http://www.theelevatormuseum.org/e/E-5.htm

1958 – The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus became the first watercraft to reach the geographic North Pole. Commanding Officer, Commander William R. Anderson, announced to his crew, “For the world, our country, and the Navy – the North Pole.”

http://www.ussnautilus.org/nautilus/index.shtml

1977 – Tandy Corp of Texas held a New York press conference to announce that it would manufacture the TRS-80.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2010/08/august-3-1977-the-trs-80-personal-computer-goes-on-sale/

1995 – John Romero released the first screenshots of Quake on the Internet. They were 320 x 200 TIFFs.

http://rome.ro/news/2016/6/22/happy-20th-birthday-quake

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1870 – The world’s first underground tube railway, (the Met had been the first underground non-tube railway) Tower Subway, opened in London, running from Lower Thames street to Vine Street. It closed after 4 months of operation.

http://books.google.com/books?id=UgcHBtYPYy0C&pg=PA113#v=onepage&q&f=false

1880 – Parliament officially adopted Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the official time of Great Britain.

http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/gmt.htm

1902 – Mina Spiegel Rees was born in Ohio and became one of the earliest female computer pioneers. She ran the Office of Naval Research, where she organized work on early computers like the Harvard Mark I.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Rees.html

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1873 – Andrew Smith Hallidie took his San Francisco cable car for its first test run. The tracks ran from Clay and Kearny Streets for 2800 feet to a hill 307 feet above.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blstreetcars.htm

1967 – The US Navy recalled Captain Grace Murray Hopper to active duty to continue to COBOL and other projects.

http://www.doncio.navy.mil/chips/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=3556

1981 – MTV began broadcasting in the United States, playing The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and changing how we view music forever.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/xavierstagecoach/mtv-is-30-what-are-the-first-5-videos-they-played-3upv

2013 – Motorola announced the Moto X Android phone with multiple customization options. It was the first phone designed entirely after Google bought Motorola.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/1/4578890/this-is-the-moto-x

2014 – Apple officially acquired Beats Electronics making Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre Apple employees.

http://recode.net/2014/08/01/apples-3-billion-beats-purchase-now-apparently-a-done-deal/

2016 – Japan’s NHK began the first regular TV satellite broadcasts in 8K resolution from 10 AM to 5 PM. Viewing stations around Japan were set up to view the broadcasts as no 8K TVs were on the market.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/2/12349954/8k-broadcasts-start-japan-nhk

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