The Nashville Technology Council Board of Directors and staff would like to wish everyone a happy Fourth of July weekend!  To celebrate this weekend, we decided to post a special blog to celebrate our Independence Day in the technology world. 

I hope you enjoy reading about some developments that took place on July 4th that had a significant impact on the future of technology:

• 1826 – Not technology based, just interesting:  Thomas Jefferson, then John Adams both die on the 50th anniversary of Declaration.
• 1827 – A patent is submitted to develop a writing apparatus, which self supplies itself with ink.
• 1917 – AT&T accomplishes their first ground-to-air transmission over a distance of 2 miles.
• 1934 – Leo Szilard filed the first patent application for the method of producing a nuclear chain reaction aka nuclear explosion.
• 1956 – MIT’s Whirlwind allows keyboard input to the machine.  The Whirlwind is also important because it helped bring in a new form of memory for computers, core memory, which was installed in 1953.
• 1996 – Hotmail Launches its free online email service.
• 1997 – NASA Pathfinder landed on Mars. Unmanned mission included physical and chemical characterization of Martian surface.
• 2006 – The Discovery Shuttle Launches in to space on its way to the International space station with a mission to repair the Hubble telescope.