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First Man-Made Object to Leave Solar System
June 13, 1983 The NASA space probe Pioneer 10 crosses the orbit of Neptune, becoming the first man-made object to leave the Solar System. It was launched on March 2, 1972 toward the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of the constellation Taurus. The last contact with Pioneer 10 was on January 23, 2003. …
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Launch of Venera 4
June 12, 1967 The Soviet probe Venera 4 is successfully launched. On October 18, 1967, it will enter Venus’ atmosphere where it will become the first space probe to successfully return atmospheric data from another planet. The post Launch of Venera 4 appeared first on This Day in Tech History. This Day in Tech History Tech…
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Speak & Spell
June 11, 1978 Texas Instruments Inc. introduces the Speak & Spell, a talking educational toy for children. The device features the first electronic duplication of the human voice on a single chip of silicon. It transformed digital information processed through a filter into synthetic speech and could store more than 100 seconds of linguistic sounds.…
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Crossing the Atlantic With Cable
June 10, 1858 Two ships head out to begin work on what will become the first operational Transatlantic cable. Previous attempts at laying a Transatlantic cable had failed. Designed for telegraph operation, the cable run is completed on August 5th and the first test message is sent on August 12th. However, the cable fails on…
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Life Finds a Way
June 9, 1993 The motion picture Jurassic Park premiers in Washington D.C. The highest grossing film in history at the time, the contributions of Jurassic Park to the field of special effects is perhaps as important as the original Star Wars movie 16 years prior. During the production of the movie, the decision was made to…
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One Processor to Rule Them All
June 8, 1978 Intel introduces the 16-bit 8086 processor with clock speeds of 10, 8, and 5 MHz. The 8086 would become the basis for the series of processors used in “IBM Compatible” PCs and the x86 family (later marketed under the name “Pentium”) would dominate the market in the PC era. Ironically, however, it…
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The Breakup of Microsoft … That Never Happened
June 7, 2000 United States District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson orders the breakup of Microsoft into two companies: one that will develop operating systems and one that will develop other applications. Microsoft immediately announces that it will file an appeal of the judgment. What would have been a monumental event in the history of the technology…
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Palm Pre Released
June 6, 2009 Palm, Inc. releases the Palm Pre smartphone through Sprint in an attempt to regain marketshare, after their Treo line of smartphones is dwarfed by Apple’s iPhone. Featuring the Linux-based Palm webOS operating system, the Pre receives some praise from technical reviewers, but due to poor marketing and the rapid pace in which…
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Palm Pre Released
June 6, 2009 Palm, Inc. releases the Palm Pre smartphone through Sprint in an attempt to regain marketshare, after their Treo line of smartphones is dwarfed by Apple’s iPhone. Featuring the Linux-based Palm webOS operating system, the Pre receives some praise from technical reviewers, but due to poor marketing and the rapid pace in which…
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The Apple II Enters the Market
June 5, 1977 The original Apple II computer goes on sale. The Apple II featured an a 1MHz MOS 6502 processor, an integrated keyboard, a built-in BASIC programming environment, expandable memory (4K expandable to 48K), a monitor capable of color graphics, a sound card, and eight expansion slots. To include all these features in one…