1660 – Twelve 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.
1814 – For the first time, an automatic
steam-powered press printed The Times in London. German inventors Friedrich
Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer built the press. The Times quickly pointed
out that they would not layoff workers, but instead increase printing, bringing
the paper to a wider audience.
1948 –
Polaroid Instant Camera Goes on Sale
Just in
time for the Christmas shopping season, 57 units of the first commercial
instant camera, the Polaroid Land Camera Model 95, go on sale at the Jordan Marsh
department store in Boston. Producing sepia toned photographs in about one
minute, the Model 95 became a hit almost as quickly. Polaroid believed that 57
units would be enough last through Christmas. All 57 units and all the film
available were sold on the first day. It was simple to use, portable, and the
instant gratification that came from the self-developing film made the camera’s
inventor, Edwin H. Land, who was also the company’s founder. Nearly one million
Model 95’s were produced, setting the stage for Polaroid’s flagship product
line, making the company’s name synonymous with instant film and the cameras
that used them. True black-and-white instant film was released in 1950, but
Polaroid didn’t create color film until 1963. Polaroid produced their instant
film cameras until 2008.
1954 – Herbert Bright,
Developer of One of the First FORTRAN User Programs, Dies at 67
Herbert
Bright, developer of one of the first FORTRAN user programs (and consequently,
the first error message), dies at 67. Bright had been a promoter of security
through data encryption, as well as a research engineer at AT&T
Laboratories. He also held various executive offices in the Association for
Computing Machinery (ACM).
1964 – NASA launched Mariner 4 towards Mars
where it would conduct the first successful flyby of the red planet.
1983 – Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000
To
counter IBM, Tandy releases the Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000 computer. It housed the
80186 processor and 128 KB of RAM. There were 2 – 720 KB floppy drives and the
MS-DOS Operating System. The prices ranged from $2,750. For an additional fee
you could get a Monochrome graphics card, optional color monitor and extra RAM.
The Tandy 2000 was considerably faster than the IBM PC models.
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