Today in Tech History with Tom Merritt

In 1976 – Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne decided to change their garage project into a company and formed Apple Computer. It would be incorporated the following January. In 1997 – Dave Winer changed how he displayed ‘Scripting…Read more →

In 1939 – Harvard and IBM signed an agreement to build the Mark I, also known as the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC). It weighed 5 tons and read data from paper tape and punch cards. In 1993 –…Read more →

In 240 BC – Chinese astronomers observed a new broom-shaped “star” in the sky. It was the first confirmed sighting of Halley’s Comet. In 1950 – Bell Telephone Laboratories announced the invention of a new kind of electric eye called…Read more →

In 1941 – 80% of US AM radio frequencies were reassigned to new channels as part of the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement. In 1945 – German soldiers blew the launch tracks for the V-1 rocket site near Letelle, Netherlands,…Read more →

In 1905 – Cornelius Ehret of Rosemont, Pennsylvania received a patent for the “Art of Transmitting Intelligence.” It was the forerunner of the modern fax. In 1935 – Robert Goddard launched the first rocket equipped with gyroscopic controls near Roswell,…Read more →

In 1850 – San José was incorporated as one of the first cities in California and was the site of the first state capital. It would lose the capital to Vallejo in 1852 but eventually become the center of Silicon…Read more →

In 1973 – Larry Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan. He would go on to help invent and co-found Google. In 1976 – Queen Elizabeth II sent the first royal email, from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in…Read more →

In 1925 – John Logie Baird gave his first public demonstration of his ‘Silhouette Television’ at the Selfridges department store, Oxford Street, London. It was part of the store’s birthday celebration. In 1979 – The first fully functional space shuttle…Read more →

In 1802 – Richard Trevithick and Andrew Viviane of Camborne Parish in the County of Cornwall, enrolled a patent for a steam engine that could power a full-sized road locomotive. They had previously demonstrated it by driving up a hill…Read more →

In 1857 – The first department store elevator for passengers was installed at E.V. Haughwout & Co. in New York City. This was a significant development towards the building of skyscrapers. In 1996 – The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis docked…Read more →

In 1895 – The Lumiere brothers showed their first film to an audience. It was a romantic comedy about a crowd of mostly women leaving a building. In 1960 – Arthur Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes were granted the first…Read more →

In 1965 – NASA launched Ranger 9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes. Ranger 9 slammed into the Moon sending back high-resolution pictures of the Lunar surface before impact. In 1999 – Dr. Bertrand Piccard, a…Read more →

In 1800 – Alessandro Volta dated a letter announcing his invention of the voltaic pile to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, London. We’ve been dealing with battery life ever since. In 1886 – The first alternating current…Read more →

In 1474 – The Venetian Senate issued a Statute on Industrial Brevets that is widely considered the first patent law. Patents had been issued before, often at the whims of monarchs, but this statute codified the practice and set out…Read more →

In 1839, Sir John Herschel presented his ‘Note on the Art of Photography, or the application of the Chemical Rays of Light to the purposes of Pictorial Representation’ to the Royal Society, likely the first use of the word ‘photography’.…Read more →