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From the Archives: Measurement Milestone
Today in 1790, the French National Assembly passed two decrees: One asked the French Academy of Sciences to determine “the scale of division most suitable for weights and measures and for coins;” the other instructed the French Academy to work with the … Continue reading
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1895 Computer
Today in 1895, Otto Steiger was issued a patent for his Millionaire calculating machine. For the next 40 years, Switzerland’s Hans Egli manufactured 4,700 machines, which weighed 120 pounds each. The Millionaire was notable in its ability to perform direct multiplication, … Continue reading
From the Archives: Sony Established
Today in 1946, more than twenty members of the Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute, founded by Masaru Ibuka in the previous year, attended the inauguration ceremony which officially established the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. Ibuka’s father-in-law, Tamon Maeda was appointed president of the … Continue reading
First Disk Drive Announced
Today in 1955, IBM made an announcement that went largely unnoticed outside the computer community and other technical circles. The company reported that a team of engineers working in a small research and development laboratory in San Jose, California, had … Continue reading
From the Archives: Computer Programming Born
Today in 1949, the Electronic Delayed Storage Automatic Computer (EDSAC), the first practical stored-program computer, ran its first program and performed its first calculation. “… a thin ribbon of paper containing the program [to print a table of the squares of the integers] … Continue reading
First Computer Exclusively Designed to Play a Game
Today in 1951, the NIMROD, a special purpose computer that played the game of Nim, was displayed at the Exhibition of Science during the Festival of Britain. Designed and built by Ferranti, it was the first digital computer exclusively designed to play a game, … Continue reading
Cattle Logs from 1882 to 2012
After seeing a card catalogue in the Iowa State University library in 1882, Thomas B. Wales, the secretary of the Holstein-Friesian Association of America, applied the idea to the 40,000 animals in the Holstein-Friesian Herd Book. He estimated that the number … Continue reading
The Past and Future of Moving Money
Stephanie Buck, Masahable: “…are consumers ready to wholeheartedly adopt the latest in mobile payment technology? Adults who are unbanked, for instance, may face a barrier to mobile transactions — there are currently 17 million unbanked adults in the U.S. But many … Continue reading
Birth of Botanical Classification, Taxonomy
Today in 1753, Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of his two volume work Species Plantarum, in which he used for the first time a consistent naming structure for plants and laid the basis for modern nomenclature. The classification employed in the work allowed easy … Continue reading
The Earth Shrunk in the 19th Century
“A critical fact in the world of 1801 was that nothing moved faster than the speed of a horse. No human being, no manufactured item, no bushel of wheat … no letter, no information, no idea, order, or instruction of … Continue reading
The Story of Information 