Today in History – July 26, 1969 – Moon rocks collected from Apollo 11 are first examined. A week earlier,  Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon, fulfilling President Kennedy’s challenge to put a “man” on the moon before the end of the decade. With a tight development and execution schedule, any number of things [...]

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In July – July 31, 1790 – first U.S. patent went to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement “in the making Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process.” President George Washington, Attorney General Edmund Randolph, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson signed the patent. Only two other patents were granted that year, [...]

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Today in History – July 23, 1995- National Inventors Hall of Fame opens in Alexandria, Virginia at the United States Patent and Trademark Office,  honoring “the women and men responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible.” The museum’s most recent exhibit includes materials from Michael Jackson’s patent and [...]

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Today in History – July 22, 1975 – Bill Gates and Paul Allen sign Microsoft’s first official contract licensing their BASIC to MITS, the makers of the Altair kit computer. The young entrepreneurs had hit upon a revolutionary new concept—the idea that a company could make money selling software for microcomputers. As Bill puts it [...]

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Today in History – July 20, 1969 – Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon, fulfilling President Kennedy’s challenge to put a “man” on the moon before the end of the decade. With a tight development and execution schedule, any number of things could have gone wrong. Instead, the major flaw, from the public’s knowledge,  [...]

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