This Day in Geek History: April 10 Happy Bday Steven Seagal …great Chop Sockie every time all the time 1710 The first law regulating copyright is issued in Great Britain. 1790 George WashingtonUnited States President George Washington signs the first U.S. patent statute into law. The first Patent Board, responsible for granting patents on “useful and important” inventions, will be composed of the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of War. It will issue the first patent under the statute on July 31, 1790. In the first three years following the passage of the statute, only forty-seven patents will be granted. Read more about the history of U.S. patent law. 1930 The first synthetic rubber is created by Dr. Arnold M. Collins who isolates chloroprene and observes its polymerization. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company will begin manufacturing synthetic rubber on November 2, 1931. 1943 The University of Pennsylvania begins constructing the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), which, once completed, will become the first general-purpose electronic computer, capable of making calculations one thousand times faster than any other prior computer. The work will be carried out in secret since the computer is intended to compute trajectory tables for military artillery, though it won’t be completed until after World War II. The calculations were previously carried out by group of women called “computers” who worked with mechanical calculators. The ENIAC will be unveiled to the public in February 1946. 1944 Three U.S. television stations link to transmit a the short film, Patrolling the Ether, simultaneously. The film depicts amateur radio operators aiding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in monitoring the airwaves for Nazi spy transmissions. The broadcast marks the beginning of network television. 1953 House of Wax Warner Brothers studios premieres the first 3-D color feature film, House of Wax, directed by André de Toth and starring Vincent Price, in New York City. It opens just a day after the premiere of the first 3D feature film ever released by a major studio, Columbia Pictures’ Man in the Dark, and only months after the November release of Bwana Devil, the first American color feature released in 3-D. The three movies mark the beginning of the “golden era” of 3-D movie releases that will last through 1955 and inspire a popular revival in 1960. House of Wax’s general release will occur on April 25, 1953. The film is also notable for being Vincent Price’s first major horror role. Produced on a budget of roughly US$1 million, it will gross US$23,750,000 domestically. Running Time: 1 hr 28 mins 1955 Dr. Jonas Salk first successfully tests the polio vaccine. 1972 The United States and the Soviet Union join seventy nations in signing an agreement banning biological warfare. 1978 Volkswagen becomes the first non-American automobile manufacturer to build cars in the United States when it opens a plant in Pennsylvania 1979 The horror film Dawn of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero, premieres the U.S. in New York. The film is a sequel to Night of the Living Dead, which was produced on a meager budget of US$114,000. The film features a brief video game arcade sequence which was filmed through November 1977 and into early 1978 at the Machine Shop 2 video arcade in the Monroeville Mall near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The scene is a light-hearted break following a number of gruesome scenes. Among the games featured in the film are Boot Hill and Night Driver. The film was produced with a budget of US$1.5 million. (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 2 hrs 6 mins 1981 The maiden launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia is delayed due to a computer malfunction in one of shuttle’s general purpose computers. (STS-1) The mission will be successfully launched on April 12th. 1989 The Spring COMDEX trade show is held, in Chicago, Illinois. At the event, Intel introduces the 25MHz 80486 microprocessor. The processor features the equivalent of about 1.2 million transistors, integrating the 80386 processor, a 80387 math coprocessor, and an 8KB primary cache. Price: US$900 At the event, Intel also introduces the 33MHz version of the 80386DX microprocessor and 80387 math co-processor. 1991 The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) publicly announces the investigation of Nintendo on charges of price-fixing is made public. Nintendo has signed a consent decree in which the company agrees to not fix prices in the future or penalize retailers who sell Nintendo merchandise below suggested retail prices. Nintendo also agrees to refund five dollars in the form or a coupon to consumers who purchased a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) between June 1, 1988 and December 30, 1990. 1995 Midway Amusement Games releases version 1.0 of the versus fighting game Mortal Kombat 3 to arcades in the U.S. Robert Glaser releases RealAudio, the first real-time streaming audio system for the internet. ABC News and National Public Radio will be among the first companies to implement the new system. The world’s first national DNA database, the National DNA Database (NDNAD), is launched in the UK. Police are authorized to retain DNA samples of those arrested using mouth swabs or hair samples. In just ten years, over three million profiles will be collected. Read more at Gene-Watch. 1996 The 11th AEGON Computer Chess Tournament, which pits human competitors against computers, is held April 10-17 in The Hague, Netherlands. Fifty chess masters and fifty computers compete in the event. Most of the computers are Hewlett-Packard 166MHz Pentium machines with 16MB RAM. Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan will win the tournament with six straight wins and without losses. The most successful computer will be QUEST, with four wins and a draw and a 2652 performance rating. 1997 In the April 10th issue of the journal Nature scientists at Sandia National Laboratories and France Telecom announce that they have developed a prototype protonic memory chip that retain data even after power has been shut down. 1998 Global Village announces an agreement to sell its modem business to Boca Research for US$10 million in cash and notes. 1999 Bleem, LLC begins shipping BLEEM!, a PlayStation emulator for personal computers. 2000 The website of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is hacked by the “InSaNiTy ZiNe c0rp.” 2001 Internet radio stations across the web temporarily suspend of service due to royalty disputes. Many of the services are real-world radio station which have begin to stream their broadcasts online. 2002 Version 2.2.1 of the Python programming language is released. 2003 Sonys BDZ-S77 Blu-ray Disc RecorderSony sells the first Blu-Ray DVD (Blue-Laser DVD) recorder, the BDZ-S77, more than a year after the initial announcement of the Blu-ray optical disc format. The disks have a storage capacity of nearly twenty-three gigabytes of data through the use of blue lasers which have a narrower wavelength than the conventional red laser DVDs, which yield a maximum capacity of approximately 4.7 gigabytes per layer per side. 2006 Disney announces that it will begin offering downloads of its television shows from its website abc, for a two month trial period. 2007 The first workshop devoted to understanding botnets is held at the HotBots ’07 Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the workshop, representatives of Google present a paper entitled, “The Ghost in the Browser: Analysis of Web-based Malware.” 2008 International Business Machines (IBM) demonstrates racetrack memory for the first time. According to the company, it could prove to be a storage medium faster than hard drives and cheaper than RAM, with a higher capacity than either. The advance is the result of the discovery that magnetic domains can be made to move along a wire. Racetrack memory makes use of the discovery by storing data into domains on very thin U-shaped wire. A magnetic field can then be used to push those domains along the wire or “track,” past a sensor that reads the data. Read more at New Scientist. 2009 Version 7.1 of the PC-BSD operating system is released.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 01:00:16 +0000
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