Today in Tech History – January 7

1714 – Henry Mill patented a machine for transcribing letters “one after another, as in writing.” Sadly, he died before he perfected the first typewriter.

1839 – Louis Daguerre made the first announcement of his photographic system at the Academie des Sciences in Paris, though details were not presented until August of that year.

                                           

1943 – Nikola Tesla Passed Away

             Born in 1856, Nikola Tesla was the inventor of alternating current. Tesla even worked for Edison from 1882 to 1886. He then started the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing company in where he worked more on AC electricity.

This started the “War of Currents”, which we talked about on January 3^rd when Edison electrocuted Topsy, the Elephant.

Tesla was also known for many patents and inventions, including the Telsa coil, Electro-magnetic motor, incandescent electric light, electric railway system and many more. He was known for X-Rays, radio, the remote control and wireless communications.

1954 – In New York at IBM headquarters, IBM and Georgetown University showed off their joint project on machine translation. More than 60 sentences were translated from Russian to English using eight grammar rules.

1963 – Ivan Sutherland Introduces the Sketchpad

             Ivan Sutherland introduces the Sketchpad submitting his PhD thesis to MIT. The Sketchpad, one of the earliest programs for the TX-0, allowed direct manipulation of objects on a computer screen. Using the Sketchpad, a user could create and manipulate graphical figures with a light pen. This considered one of the seminal papers in computer science.

1968 – The Last Surveyor Launches

             Surveyor 7 lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral. Surveyor 7 was the seventh and last lunar Lander of the American unmanned Surveyor program sent to explore the surface of the Moon.

2003 – Apple released the public beta of its new browser, called Safari.

                                           

2016 – the 49^th Mersenne prime was discovered by Dr. Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri as part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime search. It was written as 2^74,207,281-1.

                                           
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