Miscellaneous Technology

January 17, 1984

The US Supreme Court rules 5-4 that private use of home VCRs to tape TV programs for later viewing does not violate federal copyright laws. This ruling opens the floodgate for VCR sales, changing the landscape of TV watching forever.

January 14, 1914

The first car to be built on an assembly line was completed today, a Model-T Ford.

January 13, 1910

The first public radio broadcast takes place; a live performance of the opera Cavalleria rusticana is sent out over the airwaves from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

January 13, 1874

The U.S. Patent Office issues a patent for the Spalding Adding Machine. The precursor of calculators and computers, mechanical adding machines could do simple arithmetic and were popular in businesses until supplanted by computers in the 1960s.

January 10, 1863

The world’s first underground railway service opened in London, the Metropolitan line between Paddington and Farringdon. Approximately 40,000 Londoners ride the trains the first day.

January 9, 1894

W.K. Dickson, an employee of Thomas Edison’s movie studio, receives a copyright for a motion picture film. The 5 second demonstration was a 47-frame film showing a man sneezing. This man, Fred Ott, is now most famously known for having this sneeze recorded in film. “Fred Ott’s Sneeze” is the earliest surviving film to receive a copyright in the United States. While technically a copyright for a film had been granted to Edison’s studio in the previous year, the records for what film it was have been lost.

January 8, 1889

Herman Hollerith is issued a US patent for his punched card calculator. 7 years later he starts a company called the Tabulating Machine Company. In 1911, this is one of 4 companies that merge to form the company that will one day be called IBM.

January 5, 1948

The first color newsreel seen by movie theater audiences in the United States is presented, showing clips from the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl football game, shot just 4 days earlier. The entire newsreel is available on YouTube, although inexplicably, the date listed on the video states 1940.

January 5, 1933

Construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.

January 4, 1972

Hewlett-Packard introduces the first handheld scientific calculator, the HP-35. The precision of the calculator was greater than most mainframe computers of its time. For such a technological achievement, the name of the calculator is simply derived from the fact that it has 35 buttons. I wonder if they had to use the calculator to figure that out.