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May 6, 1953: The Heart-Machine Age Begins
1953: Philadelphia surgeon John H. Gibbon Jr. performs the first successful human-heart surgery assisted by a heart-lung machine. For 26 minutes, Gibbon unhooked his patient’s heart from its usual...
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June 9, 1902: Put a Nickel In, Take Your Food Out
1902: Joe Horn and Frank Hardart open the Automat at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. It’s America’s first coin-operated cafeteria. Customers would put nickels into slots, turn a knob and open a...
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Oct. 13, 1884: Greenwich Resolves Subprime Meridian Crisis
1884: Geographers and astronomers adopt Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, the international standard for zero degrees longitude. The late 19th century was an era of standardization. With the Second...
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Nov. 4, 1952: Univac Gets Election Right, But CBS Balks
1952: Television makes its first foray into predicting a presidential election based on computer analysis of early returns. The Univac computer makes an amazingly accurate projection that the network...
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Nov. 5, 1992: Oldest Beer Ever
1992: Scientists report evidence in the journal Nature of ancient beer in a 5,000-year-old jug at Godin Tepe in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran. It’s the earliest trace of beer ever discovered....
View ArticleDec. 7, 1963: Video Instant Replay Comes to TV
1963: The college football game between Army and Navy marks the first use of video instant replay during a sports telecast. Many fans find it confusing. The annual matchup between these two military...
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Feb. 10, 1996: Checkmate!
1996: The first chess game between a human champion and a computer takes place, with international grandmaster Garry Kasparov losing to IBM’s Deep Blue in Philadelphia. Had Kasparov gone on to lose the...
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April 20, 1940: Electron Microscope Crosses the Atlantic; Zworykin Crosses...
1940: Vladimir Zworykin, better known as a co-inventor of television, demonstrates the first electron microscope in the United States. Once again, the Russian emigré improves but does not, strictly...
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Oct. 14, 1858: This History Might Ring a Bell
Manual labor hoists the great hour bell into place high in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament in London. Some people are already calling the 14.33-ton bell "Big Ben."
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