Today in 20th Century Tech History

January 28 in 20th century tech history

In 1934: The first ski tow in America begins operation in Vermont.

In 1986: Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board.

January 27 in 20th century tech history

In 1939: The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a World War II American fighter aircraft, makes its maiden flight.

In 1951: Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flats.

In 1967: Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.

January 26 in 20th century tech history

In 1911: Glenn Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane.

In 1926: John Logie Baird makes the first successful public demonstration of television, using an electromechanical system.

In 1962: The Ranger 3 space probe is launched to study the moon. It was intended to impact the moon, but a series of malfunctions caused it to miss by 22,000 miles.

January 25 in 20th century tech history

In 1937: The Guiding Light airs on the radio for the first time. The show, a soap opera, will later move to television and become the longest-running show of any kind.

In 1961: John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential television news conference.

In 1994: The Clementine space probe launches.

January 24 in 20th century tech history

In 1922: Christian K. Nelson of Onawa, Iowa receives a patent for the Eskimo Pie.

In 1948: IBM dedicates its Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator in New York City. It was the last large electromechanical computer built, and the first computer to run a stored program.

In 1950: Percy Spencer receives the first patent on the microwave oven, with the title "Method of Treating Foodstuffs."

In 1986: Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Uranus, passing within 81,500 km of the planet's surface.

January 23 in 20th century tech history

In 1960: The bathyscaphe Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 m (35,798 feet) into the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the world's oceans.

In 1996: The first version of the Java programming language is released to the public.

January 22 in 20th century tech history

In 1927: The first live radio commentary of a soccer match is broadcast by the BBC in the UK. The match was Arsenal vs. Sunderland and was played in London. To help listeners imagine where the ball was during play, announcers divided the field into numbered squares, and thereby gave birth to the expression "back to square one".

In 1939: The uranium atom is split for the first time using the cyclotron at Columbia University in Manhattan. Thus began the Manhattan Project, leading to the construction of the atomic bomb.

In 1947: KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, begins operation in Hollywood, California.

In 1984: The Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with its famous " 1984" television commercial.