Today in Tech History – July 17

1850 – First Photograph of a Star

             The first photograph of a star is taken at the Harvard Observatory. The star photographed was Vera in the Lyra constellation, the 2^nd brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere.

1899 – Nippon Electric Company Ltd. (NEC) was founded by lwadare Kunihiko, an expert in telegraphic system who worked under Thomas Edison. Western Electric provided funding, making it the first Japanese joint-venture with a foreign company.

1955 – First Town Run on Nuclear Power

             During a one-hour test in 1955, Arco, ldaho became the first town to be fully electrically run on nuclear power. The small community was powered by the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS). NRTS later became the ldaho National laboratory.

1970 – Brown Box Demonstrated to Magnavox VP

             Ralph Baer demonstrated the video game system he invented, simply called the “Brown Box”, to Magnavox engineering, production, and marketing management in Ft Wayne, IN. Previously Baer had demoed the Brown Box to many other TV manufacturers including RCA, GE, Zenith, Sylvania, and Magnavox themselves without any licensing agreements. A licensing agreement with RCA was written but cancelled in March of that year. It was this demo with Magnavox’s VP of marketing present that would eventually lead to creation of the first home video game system, the Magnavox Odyssey, and the birth of the video game industry.

1975 – Apollo and Soyuz Dock

             Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 successfully dock in orbit and the astronauts and cosmonauts shake hands. This marks the first time in history that spacecraft of two nations dock in space.

1995 – The US Air Force announced the Global Positioning System had met requirements for Full Operational Capability. The navigation system was strictly the province of the US Department of Defense operated by the 2^nd Space operation Squadron of the 50^th Space Win at Falcon Base in Colorado.

1997 – Major Disruption in Sending Most E-Mail Messages

             DNS was widely disrupted making email routing and web page delivery spotty throughout the day. An Ingres database failure resulted in corrupt .COM and .NET zone files. A system administrator mistakenly released the zone file without regenerating the file and verifying its integrity.

2002 – Apple announced PC versions of the iPod with MusicMatch software instead of iTunes. The company also announced a 20GB version of the music player and touch-sensitive scroll wheel and dropped the prices.

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