In 1888 – Emile Berliner demonstrated his flat disc recording and reproduction in a lecture he gave to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, which was printed in the institute’s Journal (vol. 125, no. 60).
In 1946 – At the meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE, now IEEE) in San Francisco, Jack Mullin demonstrated the world’s first professional-quality tape recorded in the US.
In 1960 – While working at the Hughes Research Laboratories of the Hughes Aircraft company in Malibu, California, physicist Theodore Maiman used a synthetic-ruby crystal to create the first laser.
The Tech History Today podcast I’m subscribed to stopped updating on January 31 of this year. What happened? Is it available somewhere else?
Sadly no, David. It was taking too many production resources and wasn’t getting any advertising, so we stopped production on it. But I loved writing it so much I’ve kept it alive here as a blog entry.