Today in Tech History with Tom Merritt

In 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. In 1950 – Percy LeBaron Spencer received a patent for a “Method of Treating Foodstuffs” which we would recognize as the microwave oven. Spencer…Read more →

In 1896 – Wilhelm Roentgen spoke to the Würzburg Physical Medical Society where he demonstrated X-rays by photographing the hand of session chair Dr. Albert von Kolliker, a famous anatomist. In 1960 – With a crew of two, the bathyscaphe Trieste, descended 10,911 meters in the Pacific Ocean into Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench…Read more →

In 1939 -John Dunning’s Cyclotron split the uranium atom for the first time at Columbia University in New York City. And the Manhattan Project was on. In 1968 – Apollo 5 lifted off carrying the first Lunar module into space. In 1984 – Apple aired the famous “1984” commercial for the Apple Macintosh, directed by…Read more →

In 1957 – NBC taped and broadcast President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second inauguration address, further popularizing the taping of video. In 1981 – The first DeLorean DMC-12 sports car rolled off the production line in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland. This one made no use of gigawatts in any way. In 2004 – The Mars Rover Spirit…Read more →

In 1929 -The movie In Old Arizona was released. It was the first full-length talking motion picture in the US to be filmed outdoors. In 1934 – Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd., the photographic and electronics company known today as Fujifilm, was founded in Tokyo, Japan. In 1981 – The inauguration of US President Ronald…Read more →

In 1883 -The first electric lighting system using overhead wires went into service in Roselle, New Jersey. In 1983 – Apple released the Lisa, the second commercial computer with a graphical user interface (after the Xerox Star). It only cost $9,995 too! In 1986 – Brain became the first computer virus released into the wild.…Read more →

In 1877 – Thomas Edison tested out his new phonograph invention, by recording the first lines of the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” He recreated the event in 1927. In 1957 – Responding to Sputnik, the United States launched the Vanguard TV3. The rocket only made it a little over a meter off the…Read more →

In 1766 – James Christie held his first sale on Pall Mall in London. Christie’s still operates auctions today and is much more civilized than EBAY. In 1901 – At 2156 Tripp Avenue in Chicago, Elias and Flora welcomed their new baby boy into the world. They had no idea at the time that Mickey…Read more →

In 1985 – The Cray X-MP/48 began operation at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. It almost doubled the speed of other machines with a parallel processing system, which ran at 420 megaflops. In 1996 – General Motors began delivery of the EV1, an electric vehicle that would become well-loved by its drivers then be taken…Read more →

In 1992 – The first text message was sent on Vodafone’s U.K. network from a PC to a mobile device with the message “Merry Christmas.” In 1994 – The Sony PlayStation game console went on sale in Japan. In 1999 – NASA lost radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft entered…Read more →

In 1942 – Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and their colleagues achieved a successful nuclear fission chain reaction in a squash court underneath the football grandstand of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field. The atomic age had begun. In 1982 – A Seattle dentist named Barney Clark, deemed too sick for a heart transplant, became the…Read more →

In 1847 – The London and North Western Railway along with the Caledonian Railway adopted London Time on instructions from the General Post Office. Other railways followed suit and this was seen as the establishment of the first time zone. In 1913 – Henry Ford added the moving-chassis assembly line to produce Model T’s in…Read more →

In 1934 – The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman became the first to officially exceed 100 mph. In 1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merged to form BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world. Marconi had been founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897. In 2006 –…Read more →

In 1777 – The Spanish founded California’s first civilian settlement called Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. It would become the future state’s first capital and eventually the heart of Silicon Valley. In 1910 – The first US patent for a traffic signal system was issued to Ernest E. Sirrine. It switched an illuminated sign…Read more →

In 1660 – 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray met after Wren’s astronomy lecture to discuss the formal constitution of a society of philosophers that would become the Royal Society. It still exists and recently opened its archives on the Web. In 1814 – For the first time,…Read more →