1958 – The United States successfully entered the space age with the successful launch of the Explorer I satellite. Data from the satellite confirmed the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt circling the Earth.

1961 – The US launched a four-year-old male chimpanzee named Ham on a Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket into suborbital flight to test the capabilities of the Mercury capsule.

1971 – Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell lifted off on the Apollo 14 mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.

1984 – Apple Reorganizes

Apple announced they would split up the Cupertino based company into three divisions – Apple II (handling all Apple III computers as well), the Apple 32 division (Lisa, and new Macintosh line of computers) and Accessory Products (Printers, Keyboards, etc).

Delbert Yocam led the Apple II group which Steve Jobs would take care of Apple 32. Michael Mullar would lead the accessories.

Apple did a lot of reorganizing, including Michael Spindler to VP of the European group and William Campbell to VP of sales in the US.

1995 – AT&T and VLSI Protect Against Eavesdropping

AT&T Bell Laboratories and VLSI Technology announce plans to develop strategies for protecting communications devices from eavesdroppers. The goal would be to prevent problems such as insecure cellular phone lines and Internet transmission by including security chips in devices.

2013 – The Consumer Electronics Association announced it was awarding the Dish Hopper co-winter of Best of CES and would begin searching for a new awards partner.CBC had forced CNET editors not to award Dish a prize due to ongoing litigation between the two companies.

2015 – Troy Bradley of the US and Russian Leonid Tiukhtyaev landed the Two Eagles Balloon off the Baja coast near La Poza Grande, Mexico. They beat the world distance and duration record. They stayed aloft for 6 days, 16 hours and 37 minutes travelling 6,646 miles.

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1925 – Douglas Engelbart Born

Doug Engelbart, best known for inventing the mouse, is born. Engelbart publically demonstrated the mouse at a computer conference in 1968, where he also showed off work his group had done in hypermedia and on-screen video teleconferencing. The founder of the Bootstrap Institute, Engelbart has 20 patents to his name. Engelbart died in 2013.

1952 – Two New Primes Found with SWAC

Using the Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC), researchers found two new prime numbers the first time they attempted a prime-searching program on the computer. Within the year, three other primes had been found. The National Bureau of Standards funded construction of the SWAC in Los Angeles in 1950 and it ran, in one form or another, until 1967.

1975 – Hungarian Interior Design instructor Erno Rubik filed for a patent on his twisty toy cubes. The patent worked out for him. Erno Rubik became the first self-made millionaire from the Communist bloc.

1982 – First Computer Virus Written

Richard Skrenta writes the first PC virus code, which are 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple II boot program called “Elk Cloner”.

2000 – First Super Bowl in HD

Super Bowl XXXIV: The St. Louis Rams beat the Tennessee Titans, 23-16 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. This was the first Super Bowl to be broadcast in High Definition.

2007 – Microsoft released Windows Vista for home use. Thought not as many homes would end up using it as other versions of Windows.

2013 – RIM announced it was changing its name to BlackBerry and also unveiled BlackBerry OS 10 and the new Z10 and Q10 smartphones.

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1886 – Karl Benz submitted a patent for his Benz Patent Motorwagen, a three-wheeler vehicle with a one-cylinder four-stroke gasoline engine. The world’s first patent for a practical internal combustion engine powered automobile. Previous automobiles had been steam-powered.

1895 – Charles Proteus Steinmetz received a patent for a “system of distribution by alternating currents.” His engineering work made a widespread power grid practical.

1901 – In Brooklyn, Allen B. DuMont was born. He would go on to perfect the cathode ray tube, sell the first practical commercial television and found the first national US TV network to fail. The DuMont network was eventually sold to Fox Television Stations.

1988 – Tetris Sneaks Into the US

The computer game Tetris makes its first appearance in the United States as a PC game. The company that released the game was Spectrum Holobyte, which had dubious licensing rights to the game. When companies became interested in licensing Tetris for other platforms besides the PC, a series of events kicked off a long legal battle, in which the big winner was eventually Nintendo, who used the game Tetris to drive sales of its new Game Boy platform.

1989 – Phobos II Orbits Mars

The USSR’s Phobos II enters Martian orbit on its way to the moon Phobos. The spacecraft never completed its mission as it lost contract with the mission control on March 27. Due to some unusual last photos received from Phobos II, speculation arose that it was destroyed by a UFO. Official reports blame the failure on the onboard computer. I wonder if mission control was trying to secure the Martian licensing rights to Tetris.

2004 – Manufacturer Responds to Report of Poor Security in Electronic Voting Machines

Diebold Systems responds to a report submitted to the state of Maryland which revealed that their electronic voting machines had software security flaws that could potentially compromise election outcomes. The report, titled Response to: Department of Legislative Services Trusted Agent Report on Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System, recommended a number of corrective actions to fix security holes after an outside consulting firm successfully hacked into the voting systems under conditions similar to an election environment. Diebold allayed concerns over the flaws in their software and a spokesman stated that. “There is nothing that has not been or can’t be mitigated” in “assuring the utmost security” for the upcoming March and future elections. In an ever more networked and computerized voting infrastructure, security, accuracy and transparency could play a key role in democratic elections.

2014 – Google Sells Motorola Mobility

Google owned Motorola Mobility for only 2 years before deciding to sell it off. They chose to sell to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. A major change in the $12.5 billion acquisition they made in 2011. But of course that was after Google striped the company down a little and sold items like their cable modem division to Arris Group.

The deal was completed on October 30, 2014. In return, Motorola developed the Nexus 6 – Google’s six-inch smartphone that debuted in November 2014.

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1878 – The first commercial telephone exchange in the US was installed at New Haven, Connecticut, and served 21 subscribers connected by a single strand of iron wire. Only two conversations could be handled simultaneously and six connections had to be made for each call.

1952 – Bank of America and SRI Sign a Contract to Develop ERMA’s Pilot Model

Bank of America and SRI signed a contract for phase 3of the proposal covering the development, construction and testing of pilot model ERMA to provide service to 12 branches, ERMA was a computer-based system to process the increasing number of checks in circulation after World War II. The contract specified that Bank of America would pay SRI no more than $850,000 over four years, with an additional $25,000 for subcontracts. Although the final expenses were never released, most engineers estimate that the grand total was actually around $10 million.

1960 – The Communications Moon Relay System was inaugurated publicly when a facsimile picture of the USS Hancock was transmitted wirelessly by radio wave to Washington DC, by being bounced off the moon.

1984 – Tim McVey Day

One billion points on one quarter. That was the reason for Tim McVey Day. At the Twin Galaxies arcade back on January 17^th, Tim scored 1,000,042,270 points on one quarter to the game “Nibbler” – a hybrid Pac-Man and Centipede game. McVey got his name in Computer Games Magazine for it, and so he became the first video gamer to get a civic day in his honor.

His record was broken eight months later by Enricho Zanetti.

Of course, this event gets overshadowed by the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh.

1986 – The Space Shuttle Challenger experienced on O-ring failure in the right solid rocket booster during flight. 73 seconds after liftoff a catastrophic explosion claimed crew and vehicle.

1998 – Radio Shack Chooses Compaq

Radio Shack partners exclusively with Compaq rather than IBM to sell PCs throughout their 7,000 stores. Six years later, IBM sold its PC division to the Chinese company Lenovo. Compaq was the exclusive PC sold in Radio Shack stores for many years.

1999 – Yahoo! Buys GeoCities

Yahoo! Buys GeoCities for $3.65 billion USD. GeoCities was an early web hosting service getting its start in 1994. As a testament to its popularity, there were at least 38 million pages remaining on GeoCities when Yahoo! Shut it down in 2009.

2001 – The Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants faced off in Tampa Bay, Florida for Super Bowl XXXV, and facial-recognition surveillance cameras pointed at tens of thousands of fans entering the game. It found 12 false positives.

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1880 – Edison Patents Incandescent Lamp

Thomas Edison patents the electric incandescent lamp. While other incandescent lamps were created before his, Edison’s version was able to outstrip the others because of a combination of three factors: an effective incandescent material, a higher vacuum than other were able to achieve (by use of the Sprengel pump) and a high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable.

1948 – IBM dedicated its “SSEC” in New York City. The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator handled both data and instructions using electronic circuit made with 13,500 vacuum tubes and 21,000 relays.

1967 – Apollo 1 Tragedy

Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their spacecraft and planned launch which never took place was posthumously named Apollo 1, in the astronauts honor.

1994 – Jim Clark Leaves Silicon Graphics to Start Mosaic Communications

Silicon Graphics Inc. co-founder Jim Clark leaves the company to start Mosaic Communications with Marc Andreessen. Mosaic became Netscape Communications Corp., and the company’s first product was a web browser, subsequently renamed Netscape Navigator. The share of Netscape users peaked in the mid-1990s, but had fallen to less than one percent by the end of 2006.

2006 – Western Union discontinued Telegram and Commercial Messaging services

Founded in 1851, Western Union was responsible for getting the important messages from point A to B. whether through telegram or commercial messaging; Western Union was synonymous with the service. But on January 27, 2006, that all ended. As Western Union wrote: “Effective 2006-01-27, Western Union will discontinue all Telegraph and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative.”

2010 – iPad Introduced

Apple introduces the iPad. While still only a few years old, the introduction of the iPad triggered the close of the PC era and will certainly go down in history as one of the pivotal points in computing history.

2016 – Google’s DeepMind researchers published a paper in Nature announcing that their machine intelligence AlphaGo had defeated Fan Hui, a three-time European Go champion. The computer won five games of Go without a defeat.

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1926 – John Logie Baird gave his first public demonstration of a broadcast television picture that delivered a recognizable human face. Previously he could only broadcast silhouettes.

1932 – The US patent Office received a patent application for the cyclotron by Ernest Orlando Lawrence as a “Method and Apparatus for the Acceleration of lons.”

1949 – The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory saw first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope. Hubble photographed Hubble’s Variable Nebula (NGC 2261).

1962 – Ranger 3 Launched

Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon. The space probe was designed to transmit pictures of the lunar surface to Earth stations during a period of 10 minutes of flight prior to impacting on the Moon. Due to a series of malfunctions, the spacecraft missed the Moon by 22,000 miles.

1983 – Lotus 1-2-3 Goes on Sale

The Lotus Development Corporation releases Lotus 1-2-3 for IBM computers. While not the first spreadsheet program, Lotus was able to develop 1-2-3 because the creators of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet, did not patent their software. 1-2-3 outsold VisiCalc by the end of the year and 2 years later Lotus bought out the assets of VisiCalc and hired its main creator as a consultant.

1997 – Electronic vs. Paper Books in SF Library

The New York Times chronicles the debate between electronic and paper books in an article about the new San Francisco Public Library. Critics complained that the library sacrificed too much book space for computer terminals and too many books for online information lamenting as well the end of the traditional card catalogue that has marked a move to the information age for many libraries.

1998 – Compaq Purchased DEC

Compaq Computer purchases Digital Equipment Corporation for $9.6 billion. Digital, or DEC, was a pioneering company in the early history of computers from the 1960’s – 1980’s. Unfortunately, as was seen with many companies, they were slow to recognize the rise of the PC which ultimately led to the sell-off of all the company’s business units, cumulating with the final sale to Compaq. Compaq itself was eventually merged with HP.

2006 – Grand Theft Auto Lawsuit: Hot Coffee

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was a game that changed perception of the industry. The grit and cruelty of the GTA franchise has not only brought controversy, its also brought the fans.

One bit of controversy was the “Hot Coffee” minigame within GTA. Hot Coffee was a euphemism for sex. In the minigame, the main character and the girlfriend initiated in coitus, which got a lot of parents upset.

The Hot Coffee minigame was disabled by Take-Two, but people found ways around the block. This minigame prompted a re-rating to Adult, ultimately getting pulled from many game shelves.

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1881 – The Oriental Telephone Company

Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison established the Oriental Telephone Company Ltd. These companies were licensed to sell telephones in other countries such as Greese, Turkey, India, Japan, China and more.

Countries receiving phones would have 3-digit numbers, which changed to 4, 5, and then finally 7.

1915 – First Transcontinental Phone Service

Alexander Graham Bell inaugurates U.S. Transcontinental telephone service, speaking from New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco. President Woodrow Wilson and the Mayors of both cities were also involved in the call.

1921 – A play called Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) by Karel Capek debuted at the National Theater in Prague. It was the first appearance of the word robot. Spoiler alert, the robots end up killing all the humans but one.

1959 – First Transcontinental Jet Flight

The first transcontinental commercial jet trip was made by an American Airlines Boeing 707, from Los Angeles to New York.

1979 – Robot Kills Auto Worker

Robert Williams of Michigan was the first human to be killed by a robot. He was 25 years old. The accident at the Ford Motor Company resulted in a $10 million dollar lawsuit. The jury deliberated for two-and-a-half hours before announcing the decision against Unit Handling Systems, a division of Litton Industries. It ordered the manufacturer of the one-ton robot that killed Williams to pay his family $10 million. The robot was designed to retrieve parts from storage, but its work was deemed too slow. Williams was retrieving a part from a storage bin when the robot’s arm hit him in the head, killing him instantly. In the suit, the family claimed the robot had no safety mechanisms, lacking even a warning noise to alert workers that it was nearby.

2004 – Opportunity Lands on Mars

Opportunity rover (MER-B) lands on surface of Mars, three weeks after its twin, Spirit (MER-A) touched down on the other side of the planet.

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1935 – Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer went on sale in Richmond, Virginia in cans, developed by the American Can Company. Cans protected beer better than translucent bottles.

1948 – IBM Dedicates the SSEC

IBM dedicates the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC). Later the SSEC was put on public display near the company’s Manhattan headquarters so passers-by could watch its operational speed. Before its decommissioning in 1952, the SSEC produced the moon-position tables used for plotting the course of the 1969 Apollo flight to the moon.

1950 – Microwave Oven Patented

The original microwave oven patent was issued to Percy LeBaron Spencer under the title “Method of Treating Foodstuffs.” Five years earlier, Spencer accidentally discovered that microwave energy could heat food when a chocolate bars in his pocket melted while he was experimenting with a microwave tube. Microwave tubes were originally designed for RADAR systems.

1984 – Apple Macintosh is released

Apple Computer, Inc. released its Macintosh computer with an unprecedented media campaign, including a groundbreaking TV commercial shown during the 1984 Super Bowl. Selling for about 2,500 dollars, the Mac used a Motorola 68000 microprocessor and had 128k of RAM (memory). The Macintosh’s graphical user interface (GUI) was revolutionary and led to its rapid adoption in education, desktop publishing and graphic design. Early sales were brisk, with 70,000 units sold in the first hundred days after its introduction.

1986 – Voyager 2 Flies By Uranus

The interplanetary probe Voyager 2 makes the first fly-by of the planet Uranus. During its study of Uranus, it finds 10 previously undiscovered moons.

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1855 – First Bridge Over the Mississippi River

The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota, a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge.

1896 – The First Public X-Rays

Although he was not the only person to be working on the technology and not the first X-ray, Wilhelm Roentgen gave the first public lecture and demonstration of his device. He photographed Dr. Albert von Kolliker’s hand at the Wurzburg Physical Medical Society. The first X-ray he ever took as of his wife’s hand (with wedding ring on). The practice is also known as Rontgen rays.

1959 – Robert Noyce Conceives the Idea for a Practical Integrated Circuit

Robert Noyce, as a co-founder and research director of Fairchild Semiconductor, was responsible for the initial development of Silicon mesa and planar transistors, which led to a commercially applicable integrated circuit in 1968, Noyce went on to found Intel Corp. with Gordon Moore and Andy Grove.

1960 – With a crew of two, the bathyscaphe Trieste, descended 10,911 meters in the Pacific Ocean into Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench near Guam, the deepest known point in the oceans.

1996 – Java Released; Coffee Drinkers Confused

The first version of the Java programming language was released. The ability of Java to “write once, run anywhere” made it ideal for Internet-based applications. As the popularity of the Internet soared, so did the usage of Java.

2003 – Earth lost communication with space probe Pioneer 10 which was 12 billion-kilometers from Earth.

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1939 – John Dunning Cyclotron split the uranium atom for the first time at Columbia University in New York City. And the Manhattan Project was on.

1947 – First TV Station West of Mississippi

KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, begin operation in Hollywood, California. Bob Hope emceed the inaugural broadcast. A total of 322 televisions are in the Los Angeles viewing area.

1968 – Apollo 5 lifted off carrying the first Lunar module into space.

1984 – Apple Computer Launches the Macintosh

Apple Computer launches the Macintosh, the first successful mouse driven computer with a graphic user interface, with a single $1.5 million commercial during the Super Bowl. Apple’s commercial played on the theme of George Orwell’s 1984 and featured the destruction of Big Brother – a veiled reference to IBM – with the power of personal computing found in a Macintosh.

1998 – Microsoft and US Department of Justice

Microsoft reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice regarding Internet Explorer on Windows 95. In the agreement, computer manufacturers could have the IE link removed. This was a small step in the antitrust suit against Microsoft and using bundled software and drive out competition.

The Microsoft antitrust trial would begin on May 18, 1998 and go until November 5, 1999.

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