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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