On this day in history: Maiden flight of Boeing 747, 1969

With long-distance commercial air travel becoming more popular the President of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), Juan Trippe, urged Boeing to build a much larger passenger aircraft to replace the successful 707 and alleviate traffic congestion at airports. In 1965 Boeing engineer Joe Sutter took control of a development team, which liaised with Pan Am and other airlines to design an aircraft that would meet their requirements. The result was the 747, an aircraft that could be easily adapted to become a freight carrier when the expected supersonic air travel revolution took place.

In April 1966, Pan Am became the first of twenty-six airlines to pre-order 747s, which Boeing undertook to start delivering be the end of the decade. Pan Am again partnered Boeing along with Pratt and Whitney in the design of a new turbofan engine that would produce enough power for the enormous airliner. In spite of the limited development time, the first prototype 747 rolled out of Boeing's purpose-built assembly plant at Paine Field near Everett, Washington, on 30th September 1968.

On 9th February 1969, the first air-worthy prototype called City of Everett made its maiden flight. The flight crew comprised test pilots Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle, and flight engineer Jess Wallick. Apart from a minor fault with one of the flaps the crew reported that the aircraft handled extremely well in flight.

Flight tests continued for the next few months during which time the engineers ironed out any problems, particularly with the engines. On 15th January 1970 Pan Am took possession of the first production 747s that entered service between New York and London a week later. Over the next forty years development continued on the 747 with Boeing manufacturing a number of variants for carrying cargo as well as passengers, including the President of the United States, and even giving a piggy-back to the prototype Space Shuttle.

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First Zeppelin flight: 2nd July 1900
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On this day in history: BBC Radio first broadcast the Greenwich Time Signal, 1924

From its first broadcasts, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) included a time check before their evening news bulletins taking the form of the chimes of Big Ben being played originally on a piano and later on tubular bells. The research department at Marconi suggested that a time signal under the control of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich might be broadcast but the BBC chose to use synchronised clocks. During a radio broadcast in April 1923 the horologist Frank Hope-Jones again mooted the idea of the BBC broadcasting a more accurate time signal in the form of a series of 'pips.' In December 1923, the General Manager of the BBC, Lord Reith, and the Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, agreed on a plan to modify two clocks at the Royal Observatory to produce a signal that the BBC could broadcast.

The system produced a series of six short five seconds before the end of the hour with the last one generated on the stroke of the hour or half-hour. GPO phone cables carried this signal to the BBC where it was converted to an audible signal. At 9.30pm on 5th February 1924 the BBC broadcast the first Greenwich Time Signal, soon to be known as 'the pips,' following an introduction from the Astronomer Royal.

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Foundation stone of Royal Greenwich Observatory laid: 10th August 1675
First live radio broadcast of a soccer match: 22nd January 1927
BBC Television Service started broadcasting: 2nd November 1936
First commercial transistor radio announced: 18th October 1954

On this day in history: First gasoline powered automobile patented, 1886

The German engine designer and automobile engineer Karl Benz was born on 25th November 1844 in Karlsruhe, Baden, to Josephine Vaillant. A few months after he was born, his mother married his father, a locomotive driver named Johann George Benz, who died in a railway accident when Karl was only two years old. The death left the family in financial difficulty, but Josephine managed to provide her son with a quality education.

Karl was an excellent student, attending the local grammar school and technical college before gaining a place at the city's university to study mechanical engineering at the age of fifteen. He graduated in 1864 at the age of nineteen and spent the next seven years moving between jobs where he received professional training. In 1871 Benz opened a mechanical workshop in Mannheim with August Ritter.

Ritter turned out to be a liability. The business only survived when Benz's fiancée, Bertha Ringer, used her dowry to buy Ritter's shares. The business continued to struggle financially, so from 1878 Benz started working on patenting various innovations in engine design, including the two stroke engine, an ignition system using sparks from a battery, spark plugs, the carburettor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator. Nevertheless, the high production costs of Benz's Gas Factory resulted in the local banks demanding that his business become incorporated.

The creation of the joint-stock company Gasmotoren Fabrik Mannheim in 1882 left Benz with only five per cent of the shares in the business. He also became marginalised when it came to designing new products. Dissatisfied, a year later he left the company that he had built to enter into a partnership with the owners of a bicycle repair business, Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger.

The company called Benz & Company Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik produced a successful range of industrial machines and quickly expanded. The success of the business enabled Benz to start developing his ideas for a horseless carriage that he had been considering since his youth. In 1885 he produced the Benz Patent Motorwagen. A three wheeled vehicle powered by a 0.8hp four-stroke engine with a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph).

On 29th January 1886, Benz patented his Motorwagen. Over the next few years Benz tested his design on public roads, refined his design and produced two more models of his Motorwagen, which he made available for sale to the public. In 1888 he made his first sales, including one to the Paris-based bicycle manufacturer Emile Roger. Roger had previously produced Benz's engines under license, now he also started manufacturing the automobiles and selling them to Parisians.

Benz continued to produce innovative designs of motor vehicles. In 1894 he produced the Velo, which many regard as the first production automobile and a year later he designed the first truck. He died in 1929 at the age of eighty-four as one of the key figures in the development of the automobile industry.

A facsimile of Benz's 1886 German patent No. 37435 is available to download in pdf format.

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On this day in history: Apple Macintosh went on sale, 1984

In April 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple to market their first personal computer, the Apple I, in kit form. A little after a year later Wozniak and Jobs introduced the ground-breaking Apple II, Wayne having sold his stake to his co-founders when they incorporated the company. In 1980, the Apple III went on sale, but it was not a great commercial success.

By that time, an Apple employee called Jeff Raskin had begun developing a cheap personal computer called the Macintosh (named after his favourite apple, the McIntosh). In 1979, a number of Apple employees including Raskin and Jobs visited Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, where they saw a Xerox Alto computer. The Alto ran an innovative graphical user interface (GUI) controlled by a new device called a mouse, alongside the traditional keyboard.

Apple began developing their own GUI to run not only on the Macintosh, but also on a business machine that they had in development called the Lisa. Jobs initially headed up the Lisa project, but soon realised that the Macintosh was a better commercial prospect. In 1981, a personality conflict between Raskin and Jobs resulted in Raskin departing the Macintosh project team, which was taken over in 1982 by Jobs following him being forced out of the Lisa team.

On 24th January 1984, the Apple Macintosh went on sale for $2,495. It had a 8Mhz Motorola 68000 processor and 128KB of RAM (boosted by a 64KB ROM chip). The built in 9-inch black and white screen had a resolution of 512x342 pixels. A 3.5-inch floppy drive was included with which software was loaded and files could be saved.

Two days prior to the Macintosh going on sale, an Orwellian themed advertisement for the Macintosh was shown during Super Bowl XVIII. This now famous advert was directed by Ridley Scott and cost in the region of $1.5 million. Whether due to this advertisement or not, the Macintosh proved an immediate success, selling over 70,000 units within four months.

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On this day in history: Balloonmania reached the United States, 1793

In the years following the Montgolfier brothers' first successful balloon flights in 1783 'balloonmania' swept across Europe. One of the greatest promoters of this new form of transport was the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard. He made his first successful flight at Paris using a hydrogen filled balloon in March 1784. He then travelled around Europe demonstrating his balloons becoming the first to fly a balloon across the English Channel (accompanied by Dr. John Jeffries), as well the first to fly such devices in Belgium, Germany, Holland and Poland.

Blanchard then crossed the Atlantic and on 9th January 1793 he added to his records by making the first balloon flight in the United States. President George Washington observed Blanchard take to the air at around 10:10am from Philadelphia in Pennsylvania after having given the Frenchman a letter under his seal requiring that no US citizen hinder him. Also watching the launch were the future presidents John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. At 10:56am, Blanchard landed at Deptford in Gloucester County, New Jersey, where he soon attracted a crowd of bemused onlookers who were not only impressed by the manner of his arrival, but also by the President's letter.

Blanchard's Journal of my forty-fifth ascension, being the first performed in America, on the ninth of January, 1793 is available in a number of file formats on the Internet Archive site.

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Montgolfier Brothers first public balloon flight: 17th December 1783
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On this day in history: First transatlantic telephone service, 1927

The earliest attempt at transatlantic telephony was in 1915 when the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (later known as AT&T) managed to transmit one-way voice signal between the Naval Wireless Station in Arlington, Virginia and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The limits of available technology and then the First World War brought an end to the experiments. Eight years later AT&T again demonstrated the feasibility of telephone calls between Europe and the United States by sending a speech signal from New York to New Southgate in London.

At that time the General Post Office (GPO) managed the British telephone system and its head, the Postmaster-General, was so impressed with the demonstration that he decided to cooperate with AT&T and the Western Electric Company to create a commercial transatlantic telephone service using radio signals. The GPO built a 200 kilowatt transmitter at the Post Office Station at Rugby and experiments began to improve transmission to such a point that it was commercially viable. Furthermore the telephone network infrastructure in Britain and the United States required substantial development.

In February 1926, the engineers achieved two-way voice communication between the two radio stations and a month later journalists gathered at the trunk exchanges in London and New York to take part in a demonstration of two-way voice communication. Finally, on 7th January 1927, the service opened with a call between Sir Evelyn Murray, the Secretary of the GPO and Walter S. Gifford, the president of AT&T, followed by calls between those subscribers who had booked calls for that day.

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On this day in history: Electricity generated by nuclear power for the first time, 1951

In 1934 the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi produced nuclear fission for the first time for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics four years later. After receiving his prize, Fermi emigrated to the United States with his Jewish wife, Laura, to escape Mussolini's increasingly anti-semitic fascist regime in his homeland. He worked at Columbia University where he continued experimenting on nuclear fission before joining the project at the University of Chicago constructing the world's first nuclear reactor.

Following America's entry into the Second World War, the experimental work conducted on Chicago Pile-1 became part of the Manhattan Project, which was engaged in creating nuclear weapons. Following the end of the war, development began on more peaceful applications of reactor research, including the generation of electricity. To this end the United States government established the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS) - now called the Idaho National Laboratory - in the Idaho desert in 1949.

That year construction work began on the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 (EBR-1) at NRTS. Walter Zinn, who had also worked on the Manhattan Project, and his team at the Argonne National Laboratory designed EBR-1 as an attempt to prove that it was possible to create a breeder reactor rather than to become a working power plant. A breeder reactor is one that creates nuclear fuel at a rate that is greater than it can consume it.

On 24th August 1951 the reactor went critical for the first time. At 1:50pm on 20th December 1951, the power station produced electricity for the first time. It generated enough electricity to illuminate four 200watt light bulbs. The next day the scientists repeated the experiment, producing enough electricity for the EBR-1 building.

Two years later, it successfully began producing fuel as a breeder reactor. Experiments continued on the EBR-1, even after the reactor suffered a partial meltdown in November 1955, until it was deactivated in 1964. The following year EBR-1 became a National Historic Landmark.

To learn more about the reactor see the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 fact-sheet available as a pdf file from the Idaho National Laboratory site.

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On this day in history: Vacuum cleaner patented, 1901

Hubert Cecil Booth began his engineering career as a draughtsman working in a team of engineers designing engines for new battleships for the Royal Navy. He then became the senior engineer for the design of three large Ferris wheels in Blackpool, Paris and Vienna. In 1901 he started his own business as a consulting engineer.

One of his first projects was inspired by an invention that blew dust out of railway carriage seats. Booth started work on a machine that would use a vacuum to suck the dust out of carpets. On 30th September 1901, Booth received the patent for the worlds first powered vacuum cleaner and he set up his British Vacuum Cleaner Company to produce the machines.

His first models were large oil powered devices that were drawn by horses to the building to be cleaned. Booth continued to refine his design, switching to electric motors and scaling them down for domestic use. His machines were used to clean Westminster Abbey before the coronation of Edward VII, and so impressed was the new king that he asked Booth to demonstrate his vacuum cleaners at Buckingham Palace following which they were installed there and at Windsor Castle.

After successfully defending his rights to the product following a legal challenge that went to the High Court, Booth focused on large-scale machines for the industrial market rather than making smaller machines for people's homes. He continued as chairman of his company until he retired at the age of eighty-one. He died a few years later, but his company lives on as a division of the pneumatic tube transport system producers, Quirepace.

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Mechanical reaper patented: 21st June 1834
Blue jeans patented: 20th May 1873
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On this day in history: First man-made object to reach the Moon, 1959

After their successes in putting the first man-made object into space the scientists of the Soviet space programme set their sights on a more remote target. Between September 1958 and June 1959 the Soviet Union launched a series of rockets carrying probes that they hoped would reach the Moon. All of the first three attempts failed to leave the Earth's atmosphere and while fourth probe, Luna 1, was successfully launched it missed the Moon by about 6,000km and became the first man-made object to enter orbit around the Sun. During the fifth attempt, the guidance systems of the R-7 rocket failed and the mission was aborted.

Early in the morning on 12th September 1959, a R-7 Semyorka rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying the lunar probe. This probe, called Luna 2, successfully separated from the third stage of the rocket and both headed off towards the Moon. Along the way it confirmed the presence of the solar wind, which was first detected by Luna 1. The next day Luna 2 expelled a bright cloud of sodium gas to aid the scientists in tracking its progress and so that they could observe the behaviour of gases in space.

At a little after 10pm UTC, on 14th September the scientists stopped receiving transmissions from Luna 2 indicating that it had impacted with the Moon. The probe landed somewhere in the Palus Putredinus ('Marsh of Decay'). Before crashing instruments on Luna 2 demonstrated that, unlike the Earth, the Moon had no radiation belts nor a significant magnetic field.

The Luna programme continued until 1976 by which time NASA had successfully made manned missions to the Moon, something the Soviets never achieved. To read more visit the Zarya site, which includes web-pages dedicated to the Luna missions.

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On this day in history: First rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, 1950

At the end of the Second World War, the United States government prioritised the extraction of key German scientists and the technology they worked on. Key to this operation - codenamed 'Paperclip' - were the brains behind the V-2 rockets, especially the project leader, Dr. Vernher von Braun. Von Braun and his team were relocated to the U.S. along with three-hundred train loads of V-2 rocket parts.

In 1946 the U.S. army began testing the reassembled rockets at White Sands in New Mexico. Over the next few the operation grew, bringing in experts from all three armed services, universities and the aeronautics industry. The development of ballistic missiles, particularly as a delivery system for nuclear warheads, required a new purpose built test-site.

In October 1949, President Harry S. Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Grounds at the chosen location: Cape Canaveral in Florida. Nine months later, on 24th July 1950, the army launched a modified V-2 rocket called Bumper 8. The rocket reached an altitude of around 10 miles.

Following the establishment of NASA in 1948, Cape Canaveral became the launch centre for historic missions into space including the launch of the first American satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958; the 1961 Freedom 7 mission that carried Alan Shepherd on a suborbital flight for NASA's first manned space mission; and, John Glenn's orbital flight the next year. The Apollo and Space Shuttle programmes launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the nearby Merritt Island. Nevertheless, the launch site at the Cape continued to be used for the Viking missions to Mars and the Voyager programme, and is still used today for the launch of unmanned missions.

The NASA web site includes the text of The Kennedy Space Center Story, chapter one of which details the early flights from the Cape.

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On this day in history: Intel founded, 1968

In the late '60s, the chemist and physicist, Dr. Gordon E. Moore, and the co-inventor of the integrated circuit, Robert N. Noyce departed Fairchild Semiconductor to set up their own company: initially NM Electronics but soon renamed Integrated Electronics Corporation, or Intel for short. Since Intelco was already used as a trademark by an hotel chain, Moore and Noyce had to buy the rights to the name in order to trade as Intel.

With money raised by the venture capitalist Arthur Rock, who became Intel's first chairman, Moore and Noyce founded their new company on 18th July 1968, based in Santa Clara, California, which was at the centre of the are soon to be known as Silicon Valley. At the outset, Intel focused on the production of semiconductors, particularly Static Random Access Memory chips for use in computers.

Dr. Gordon E. Moore and Robert N. Noyce in 1974

When the personal computing boom started, Intel were well placed to make the most of it, inventing the x86 line of computer processors, which IBM used in their PCs. Today Intel are the major manufacturer of semiconductors in the world producing a range of computing devices.

The corporate history of the company is available on their Intel Museum Worldwide site.

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On this day in history: First woman in space, 1963

Immediately after the Soviet Union's success in putting the first man into space in 1961, the head of cosmonaut training on the Russian space programme, Nikolai Kamanin, suggested to his superiors that it was their patriotic duty to again beat the Americans by being the first to put a woman into space. Chief Designer Korolev agreed and in October 1961 the search began for likeable woman who was an avowed Communist with experience of parachuting - piloting skills were not required as the Vostok spacecraft flew automatically. Five women received the call to train as cosmonauts, including Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, a textile worker and daughter of a war hero.

The five women began the exhaustive period of training and testing: centrifuge rides; isolation tests; rocket theory; parachute jumps; piloting jet fighters, physical exercise; and, weightless flights. In spite of being the least qualified - the other four had received higher education, and included engineers and test pilots - Tereshkova faired better in front of the Communist selection board than the other finalist, Valentina Ponomareva, who had excelled in all the other tests. Since the flight was essentially a propaganda exercise, Korolev nominated Tereshkova, and Premier Krushchev - who had the final say - agreed.

On the morning of 16th June 1963, Vostok 6 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the call sign "Seagull". While in space Tereshkova kept a log and took photographs, while the ground staff monitored her physical condition. Controversy surrounds the flight: some reports claimed that she became emotionally distraught, and she certainly vomited during the flight; however, the flight lasted longer than initially intended leaving her nothing to do with no support from the ground staff; she claimed that rather than the weightlessness it was the poor food she had been given that made her sick; and - as was later confirmed - she noticed that there had been an error in the automatic orientation of the capsule, which the ground crew confirmed and corrected.

Tereshkova's ordeal did not end until she safely returned to earth. After ejecting out of the capsule during its final descent (as all cosmonauts did) she noticed that she was parachuting towards lake that was to large for her to swim to the edge of in her state of exhaustion. Fortunately the wind blew her back over dry land. Nevertheless, from a propaganda point of view the mission was a complete success. Tereshkova's flight had a longer duration than all the American space-flights, thus far, put together. She was also significantly younger than all the NASA astronauts. The Soviet hierarchy quashed any attempts to discredit her, whether based in fact or chauvinism.

After the flight, Tereshkova married another cosmonaut, Andrian Nikolayev (an event which was again used for propaganda purposes leading some to think it had been contrived by the Soviet leadership), graduated as a engineer, and became a prominent politician and international representative of the USSR.

To read a biography of Valentina Tereshkova see the Encyclopedia Astronautica site.

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On this day in history: First national telecast of the Kentucky Derby, 1952

While travelling Europe during 1872 and 1873, an American called Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr. attended the famous Epsom Derby horse race held annually in England since 1780, as well as the Grand Prix de Paris, which was organised by the French Jockey Club. On his return to the United States, Clark, who was grandson of William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame, founded the Louisville Jockey Club and Driving Park Association to raise money to build racing facilities on the outskirts of the Kentucky city. Two relatives of his, John and Henry Churchill, leased the land for the track, which from 1883 was known as Churchill Downs.

On 17th May 1875, an estimated ten-thousand people gathered at the track to watch the first Kentucky Derby. Jockey Oliver Lewis rode the colt, Aristides, to victory in the 1.5 mile race. This was the same distance as the Epsom Derby and Grand Prix de Paris; however, the Kentucky Derby was run over its current distance of 1.25 miles from 1896.

Like the races that inspired it, the Kentucky Derby became a regular fixture on the social calendar, and from 1952 it also became an annual television event. On 3rd May that year, CBS broadcast the race coverage of their Louisville affiliate television station, WHAS, to the nation. The winner was Hill Gail, ridden by Eddie Arcaro and trained by Ben A. Jones.

For more details of this race see the official website page about the 78th Kentucky Derby.

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First live radio broadcast of a soccer match: 22nd January 1927

Also on this day of history
Student Revolt in Paris, 1968

On this day in history: Launch of Apollo 13, 1970

On 11th April 1970, a Saturn V rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying the crew of the Apollo 13, James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise, on what was intended to be the third manned landing on the Moon. Two days into the mission a faulty oxygen tank caused an explosion that damaged the oxygen supply and electrical systems of the Command Module, Odyssey [pictured below]. The astronauts and ground crew faced a race against time to find a solution to the life threatening situation and achieve a return to Earth.

The astronauts used the Lunar Module, Aquarius, as a 'lifeboat', reducing energy consumption and making repairs to the oxygen supply system. The three travelled around the Moon, using its gravity to set a course back to Earth. Following a difficult journey the crew managed to splashdown safely on 17th April.


To learn more about the Apollo 13 see the Lunar Surface Journal for the mission at the NASA web site.

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First rocket launched from Cape Canaveral: 24th July 1950
First man-made object to reach the Moon: 14th September 1959
First woman in space: 16th June 1963
Only spaceflight of Buran: 15th November 1988

On this day in history: Maiden flight of Boeing 747, 1969

With long-distance commercial air travel becoming more popular the President of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), Juan Trippe, urged Boeing to build a much larger passenger aircraft to replace the successful 707 and alleviate traffic congestion at airports. In 1965 Boeing engineer Joe Sutter took control of a development team, which liaised with Pan Am and other airlines to design an aircraft that would meet their requirements. The result was the 747, an aircraft that could be easily adapted to become a freight carrier when the expected supersonic air travel revolution took place.

In April 1966, Pan Am became the first of twenty-six airlines to pre-order 747s, which Boeing undertook to start delivering be the end of the decade. Pan Am again partnered Boeing along with Pratt and Whitney in the design of a new turbofan engine that would produce enough power for the enormous airliner. In spite of the limited development time, the first prototype 747 rolled out of Boeing's purpose-built assembly plant at Paine Field near Everett, Washington, on 30th September 1968.

On 9th February 1969, the first air-worthy prototype called City of Everett made its maiden flight. The flight crew comprised test pilots Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle, and flight engineer Jess Wallick. Apart from a minor fault with one of the flaps the crew reported that the aircraft handled extremely well in flight.

Flight tests continued for the next few months during which time the engineers ironed out any problems, particularly with the engines. On 15th January 1970 Pan Am took possession of the first production 747s that entered service between New York and London a week later. Over the next forty years development continued on the 747 with Boeing manufacturing a number of variants for carrying cargo as well as passengers, including the President of the United States, and even giving a piggy-back to the prototype Space Shuttle.

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First Zeppelin flight: 2nd July 1900
First successful powered aeroplane flight: 17th December 1903
Last commercial Concorde flights: 24th October 2003

On this day in history: BBC Radio first broadcast the Greenwich Time Signal, 1924

From its first broadcasts, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) included a time check before their evening news bulletins taking the form of the chimes of Big Ben being played originally on a piano and later on tubular bells. The research department at Marconi suggested that a time signal under the control of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich might be broadcast but the BBC chose to use synchronised clocks. During a radio broadcast in April 1923 the horologist Frank Hope-Jones again mooted the idea of the BBC broadcasting a more accurate time signal in the form of a series of 'pips.' In December 1923, the General Manager of the BBC, Lord Reith, and the Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, agreed on a plan to modify two clocks at the Royal Observatory to produce a signal that the BBC could broadcast.

The system produced a series of six short five seconds before the end of the hour with the last one generated on the stroke of the hour or half-hour. GPO phone cables carried this signal to the BBC where it was converted to an audible signal. At 9.30pm on 5th February 1924 the BBC broadcast the first Greenwich Time Signal, soon to be known as 'the pips,' following an introduction from the Astronomer Royal.

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Foundation stone of Royal Greenwich Observatory laid: 10th August 1675
First live radio broadcast of a soccer match: 22nd January 1927
BBC Television Service started broadcasting: 2nd November 1936
First commercial transistor radio announced: 18th October 1954

On this day in history: First gasoline-driven automobile patented, 1886

The German engine designer and automobile engineer Karl Benz was born on 25th November 1844 in Karlsruhe, Baden, to Josephine Vaillant. A few months after he was born, his mother married his father, a locomotive driver named Johann George Benz, who died in a railway accident when Karl was only two years old. The death left the family in financial difficulty, but Josephine managed to provide her son with a quality education.

Karl was an excellent student, attending the local grammar school and technical college before gaining a place at the city's university to study mechanical engineering at the age of fifteen. He graduated in 1864 at the age of nineteen and spent the next seven years moving between jobs where he received professional training. In 1871 Benz opened a mechanical workshop in Mannheim with August Ritter.

Ritter turned out to be a liability. The business only survived when Benz's fiancee, Bertha Ringer, used her dowry to buy Ritter's shares. The business continued to struggle financially, so from 1878 Benz started working on patenting various innovations in engine design, including the two stroke engine, an ignition system using sparks from a battery, spark plugs, the carburetor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator. Nevertheless, the high production costs of Benz's Gas Factory resulted in the local banks demanding that his business become incorporated.

The creation of the joint-stock company Gasmotoren Fabrik Mannheim in 1882 left Benz with only five per cent of the shares in the business. He also became marginalised when it came to designing new products. Dissatisfied, a year later he left the company that he had built to enter into a partnership with the owners of a bicycle repair business, Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger.

The company called Benz & Company Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik produced a successful range of industrial machines and quickly expanded. The success of the business enabled Benz to start developing his ideas for a horseless carriage that he had been considering since his youth. In 1885 he produced the Benz Patent Motorwagen. A three wheeled vehicle powered by a 0.8hp four-stroke engine with a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph).

On 29th January 1886, Benz patented his Motorwagen. Over the next few years Benz tested his design on public roads, refined his design and produced two more models of his Motorwagen, which he made available for sale to the public. In 1888 he made his first sales, including one to the Paris-based bicycle manufacturer Emile Roger. Roger had previously produced Benz's engines under license, now he also started manufacturing the automobiles and selling them to Parisians.

Benz continued to produce innovative designs of motor vehicles. In 1894 he produced the Velo, which many regard as the first production automobile and a year later he designed the first truck. He died in 1929 at the age of eighty-four as one of the key figures in the development of the automobile industry.

A facsimile of Benz's 1886 German patent No. 37435 is available to download in pdf format.

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First man to drive an automobile at over 300 mph: 3rd September 1935
First Formula One Championship race: 13th May 1950

On this day in history: Apple Macintosh went on sale, 1984

In April 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple to market their first personal computer, the Apple I, in kit form. A little after a year later Wozniak and Jobs introduced the ground-breaking Apple II, Wayne having sold his stake to his co-founders when they incorporated the company. In 1980, the Apple III went on sale, but it was not a great commercial success.

By that time, an Apple employee called Jeff Raskin had begun developing a cheap personal computer called the Macintosh (named after his favourite apple, the McIntosh). In 1979, a number of Apple employees including Raskin and Jobs visited Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, where they saw a Xerox Alto computer. The Alto ran an innovative graphical user interface (GUI) controlled by a new device called a mouse, alongside the traditional keyboard.

Apple began developing their own GUI to run not only on the Macintosh, but also on a business machine that they had in development called the Lisa. Jobs initially headed up the Lisa project, but soon realised that the Macintosh was a better commercial prospect. In 1981, a personality conflict between Raskin and Jobs resulted in Raskin departing the Macintosh project team, which was taken over in 1982 by Jobs following him being forced out of the Lisa team.

On 24th January 1984, the Apple Macintosh went on sale for $2,495. It had a 8Mhz Motorola 68000 processor and 128KB of RAM (boosted by a 64KB ROM chip). The built in 9-inch black and white screen had a resolution of 512x342 pixels. A 3.5-inch floppy drive was included with which software was loaded and files could be saved.

Two days prior to the Macintosh going on sale, an Orwellian themed advertisement for the Macintosh was shown during Super Bowl XVIII. This now famous advert was directed by Ridley Scott and cost in the region of $1.5 million. Whether due to this advertisement or not, the Macintosh proved an immediate success, selling over 70,000 units within four months.

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Nintendo founded: 23rd September 1889
Intel founded: 18th July 1968

On this day in history: Balloonmania reached the United States, 1793

In the years following the Montgolfier brothers' first successful balloon flights in 1783 'balloonmania' swept across Europe. One of the greatest promoters of this new form of transport was the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard. He made his first successful flight at Paris using a hydrogen filled balloon in March 1784. He then travelled around Europe demonstrating his balloons becoming the first to fly a balloon across the English Channel (accompanied by Dr. John Jeffries), as well the first to fly such devices in Belgium, Germany, Holland and Poland.

Blanchard then crossed the Atlantic and on 9th January 1793 he added to his records by making the first balloon flight in the United States. President George Washington observed Blanchard take to the air at around 10:10am from Philadelphia in Pennsylvania after having given the Frenchman a letter under his seal requiring that no US citizen hinder him. Also watching the launch were the future presidents John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. At 10:56am, Blanchard landed at Deptford in Gloucester County, New Jersey, where he soon attracted a crowd of bemused onlookers who were not only impressed by the manner of his arrival, but also by the President's letter.

Blanchard's Journal of my forty-fifth ascension, being the first performed in America, on the ninth of January, 1793 is available in a number of file formats on the Internet Archive site.

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Montgolfier Brothers first public balloon flight: 17th December 1783
First Zeppelin flight: 2nd July 1900
First successful powered aeroplane flight: 17th December 1903

On this day in history: First transatlantic telephone service, 1927

The earliest attempt at transatlantic telephony was in 1915 when the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (later known as AT&T) managed to transmit one-way voice signal between the Naval Wireless Station in Arlington, Virginia and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The limits of available technology and then the First World War brought an end to the experiments. Eight years later AT&T again demonstrated the feasibility of telephone calls between Europe and the United States by sending a speech signal from New York to New Southgate in London.

At that time the General Post Office (GPO) managed the British telephone system and its head, the Postmaster-General, was so impressed with the demonstration that he decided to cooperate with AT&T and the Western Electric Company to create a commercial transatlantic telephone service using radio signals. The GPO built a 200 kilowatt transmitter at the Post Office Station at Rugby and experiments began to improve transmission to such a point that it was commercially viable. Furthermore the telephone network infrastructure in Britain and the United States required substantial development.

In February 1926, the engineers achieved two-way voice communication between the two radio stations and a month later journalists gathered at the trunk exchanges in London and New York to take part in a demonstration of two-way voice communication. Finally, on 7th January 1927, the service opened with a call between Sir Evelyn Murray, the Secretary of the GPO and Walter S. Gifford, the president of AT&T, followed by calls between those subscribers who had booked calls for that day.

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First trans-oceanic yacht race: 11th December 1866
Charles Lindbergh arrived in Paris: 21st May 1927