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.
181 4
– 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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