Category Archives: Uncategorized

ON_December 2009 (PDF)

Today in 1894, the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history was given in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes.  Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing … Continue reading →

Aaron Swartz talks (in 2007) about the open library, “one web page for every book ever published.”

From a Book of Hours that was produced (between 1496 and 1506) for Joanna of Castile, the daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. The British Library: “The strenuous work of summer continues in these two miniatures from the … Continue reading →

Today in 1844, Samuel Morse sent the the message “What Has God Wrought” to officially open the first telegraph line, between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, launching an industry and ending a rocky journey that began with the 1837 resolution by the U.S. … Continue reading →

Today in 1865, photographs and photographic negatives were added to protected works under U.S. copyright law.

Today in 1977, the world’s first commercial interactive TV service opened for business in Columbus, Ohio. Initially operated out of a remodeled appliance store, Warner Communications’ Qube offered an unprecedented 30 channels of television divided equally between ten broadcast TV … Continue reading →

“The world will not have such a talent again in a hundred years!… I was quite besides myself for a long while because of his death, and could not believe that Providence would have so rapidly dispatched an irreplaceable man … Continue reading →

Louis H. Sullivan, the father of the modern skyscraper, said this about Chicago in 1875, as it emerged from the Great Fire of 1871 and the Economic Panic of 1873: