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Author Archives: GilPress
“This is Our Last Cry Before Our Eternal Silence”
“CALLING all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence.” Surprisingly this message, which flashed over the airwaves in the dots and dashes of Morse code on January 31st 1997, was not a desperate transmission by a radio operator … Continue reading
Posted in Telegraph, This day in information
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Counting Money Honestly: The First Cash Register
Today in 1883, James Ritty, a saloonkeeper in Dayton, Ohio, and John Birch received a patent (No. 271,363) for the first cash register, nicknamed the “Incorruptible Cashier.” There was a bell to ring up sales, referred to in advertising as “The … Continue reading
Posted in This day in information
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First Librarian of Congress Takes Office
Today in 1802, John J. Beckley became the first Librarian of the U.S. Congress. Beckley is also considered the first political campaign manager in the U.S. The Library of Congress was established less than two years earlier by an act of … Continue reading
Posted in Libraries, This day in information
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Moon Shot
Today in 1839, Louis Daguerre took the first photograph of the Moon. In December 1839, John W. Draper made a daguerreotype of the moon with the camera he built, becoming the first person in the US to photograph a celestial body.
Posted in Photography, This day in information
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The Ultimate Question
“[In Douglas Adams’ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,] a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings built a computer named Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. When the answer was revealed … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Quotes
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MIT Study Proves the World is Not Flat
Researchers at MIT and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, modeling the diffusion of social contagion by studying the spread of Twitter from 2006 to 2009, have found that “the site’s growth in the United States relied primarily … Continue reading
Race Against the Machine
“At least since the followers of Ned Ludd smashed mechanized looms in 1811, workers have worried about automation destroying jobs. Economists have reassured them that new jobs would be created even as old ones were eliminated. For over 200 years, … Continue reading
Aerial Photography First Patent
Today in 1893, the first US patent for aerial photography is issued to Cornele B. Adams of Augusta, Georgia (US No. 510,758). His method of photogrammetry can produce a topographic map by means of photographing the same tract of land … Continue reading
An Interview with Roy Freed: The law, the computer, and the mind
2011 marks the 50th anniversary of the first educational program on computer law, sponsored by the Joint Committee on Continuing Professional Education of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association (ALI-ABA). Ten years later, at the 1971 annual … Continue reading
Posted in Interviews
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Playing Games, Social and Digital
“One of the characteristics of organized game throughout history is their capacity to transcend cultural differences, social divisions and even political unrest. Straddling the boundary between the sacred and the profane, they can be great social unifiers and dividers. There … Continue reading
Posted in Social Impact, Video Games
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