Pioneer 11 Launched April 6, 1973 NASA launches Pioneer 11, the second of two probes along with Pioneer 10 sent out to explore the outer solar system. Pioneer 11 became famous for being the first man-made object to fly by Saturn… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/06/pioneer-…

RFC 1 Defines the Building Block of Internet Communication April 7, 1969 Steve Crocker, a graduate student at UCLA and part of the team developing APRANET, writes the first “Request for Comments“. The ARPANET, a research project… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/07/rfc-1-de…

Genesis of COBOL April 8, 1959 Mary Hawes, a computer scientist for the Burroughs Corporation holds a meeting of computers users, manufacturers, and academics at the University of Pennsylvania for the purpose of creating a common… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/08/genesis-…

The First Vertical Jet Flies April 11, 1957 The Ryan X-13 Vertijet makes its first vertical take off and landing, marking the first time a jet-powered aircraft successfully completed a VTOL flight. Militaries around the world at… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/11/the-firs…

18 April 2023 First Megabit Chip in Commercial Product April 18, 1986 Newspapers report that IBM’s Model 3090 mainframe has become the first commercial computer to use a megabit memory chip, 4 times the storage capacity… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/18/first-me…

Zoom Lenses Come to TV April 19, 1947 The first public demonstration of a prototype Zoomar lens is conducted inside Studio 3H at NBC’s Rockefeller Plaza headquarters in New York City. Invented by Dr. Frank G. Back, and promoted… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/19/zoom-len…

Demonstration of First Practical Electron Microscope April 20, 1940 Vladimir Zworykin, research director at RCA, holds a public demonstration of the first practical electron microscope. While the electron microscope had… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/20/demonstr…

Buried E.T. Cartridges Discovered by Archeologists April 26, 2014 As part of the filming of the documentary, Atari: Game Over, a team of archaeologists at a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico uncover the site of an estimated… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/26/buried-e…

Justice Department Blocks Microsoft Purchase of Intuit April 27, 1995 The US Justice Department sues Microsoft to block its acquisition of Intuit, Inc. In October of 2014 Microsoft and Intuit had agreed to a $1.5 billion stock… thisdayintechhistory.com/04/27/justice-…

Microsoft Registers Their Domain Name … Finally May 2, 1991 Microsoft registers the microsoft.com domain name. For such a major technology company, this was notably over 6 years from when the domain name system was created and… thisdayintechhistory.com/05/02/microsof…

The First Mass Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, i.e. Spam May 3, 1978 Gary Thuerk, a marketing representative for Digital Equipment Corporation, sends out an e-mail promoting an open house for the company’s latest computer systems… thisdayintechhistory.com/05/03/the-firs…

Commodore Assets Purchased out of Bankruptcy May 4, 1995 German company Escom AG purchases the rights to the name, patents, and intellectual property of Commodore Electronics, which had declared bankruptcy in 1994. Commodore was… thisdayintechhistory.com/05/04/commodor…

Deep Blue Defeats Kasparov in Tournament Match May 11, 1997 The IBM computer and artificial intelligence Deep Blue defeats reigning chess champion and one of the greatest chess players of all time, Garry Kasparov, in the 6th and… thisdayintechhistory.com/05/11/deep-blu…

First Demonstration of Hi-Fi Tape Technology in US May 16, 1946 Jack Mullin, an electrical engineer and US Army Signal Corps veteran in World War II, gives the first demonstration of a high-fidelity tape recording in the United… thisdayintechhistory.com/05/16/first-de…

First Sports TV Broadcast May 17, 1939 NBC carries the first broadcast televised sporting event in history, the second game of a doubleheader baseball game between Columbia and Princeton. Only about 400 TV sets were capable of… thisdayintechhistory.com/05/17/first-sp…

Contract Signed to Create ENIAC May 17, 1943 The US Army and the University of Pennsylvania sign a contract to develop ENIAC, which would become the world’s first fully electronic computer, making the use of vacuum tubes rather… thisdayintechhistory.com/05/17/contract…

Launch of Apollo 10 May 18, 1969 Apollo 10 launches from the Kennedy Space Center. It would be the final “dress rehearsal” flight to the moon before Apollo 11 would make the first Moon landing two months later. NASA had… thisdayintechhistory.com/05/18/launch-o…

Apple Announces Snow Leopard June 8, 2009 At their World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple announced their next Mac operating system Mac OS X 10.6, known as Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard, the follow up to Mac OS X… thisdayintechhistory.com/06/08/apple-an…

Greenwich Becomes Mean June 22, 1675 King Charles II of Britain decrees the establishment of an observatory at Greenwich for the purpose of finding better ways of determining the longitudinal locations of ships at sea. The… thisdayintechhistory.com/06/22/greenwic…

The First Practical Typewriter Patented June 23, 1868 Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel Soule are awarded a patent for the “Type-Writer” which would become the basis for the first practical and commercially successful… thisdayintechhistory.com/06/23/first-pr…