Today in Tech History – May 8

1790 – The French National Assembly acted on a motion from Bishop Charles Maurice de Talleyrand to create a simple, stable, decimal system of measurement units. The earliest metre unit chosen was the length of a pendulum with a half-period of a second. The system eventually evolved into the metric system.

1886 – Germans Can Be So Dry

             German scientist, Dr. Carl Gassner, is issued a German patent for the first “dry” cell battery, which uses zinc as its primary component. A U.S. patent will be issued to Gassner in 1887. His battery is much like today’s carbon-zinc, “general purpose” batteries, although most people use alkalines.

1988 – A fire broke out in the main switching room of the Hinsdale Central Office of the Illinois Bell telephone company, causing a telephone service outage for more than 40,000 local phone lines. It was considered to be the ‘worst telecommunications disaster in US telephone industry history’.

1995 – Newspapers From New Century Network

             The New York Times announced it would join eight other newspaper published in the New Century Network, with the goal of linking local online news services into a national network on the World Wide Web. The popularity of online news has grown along with the Web itself. Now, the New York Times and many other newspapers publish their entire content online every day.

1997 – Apple introduces the PowerBook 2400c weighing 4.4 pounds.

2006 – Playstation 3 Announced

             At a press conference before E3, Sony announced the Playstation 3 gaming console. This would be for a November 17 release and would feature items like Bluetooth wireless controllers, Wi-Fi and HDMI video output, and more. The system also will contain a Blu-ray disc system and pre-installed HDD. 

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