Today in History – April 19, 1957 – Release of FORTRAN programming language. FORTRAN is an acronym for FORmula TRANslation, named so because it was designed to allow easy translation of math formulas into code. Developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus, it is one of the oldest programming languages [...]

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Today in History -  April 17, 1986-  first publication of High T-C Superconductivity in Ceramic. A breakthrough discovery was made in the field of superconductivity. Alex Muller and Georg Bednorz, researchers at the IBM Research Laboratory in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, created a brittle ceramic compound that superconducted at the highest temperature then known: 30 K. What [...]

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Today in History – April 16, 1813- Interchangeable parts for firearms invented Simeon North, who is also generally credited with the invention of the milling machine that made interchangeable parts practical. Imagine a world where a child is playing with Legos, and in order to connect two of the blocks, the child has to pick [...]

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Today in History – April 14, 1932 – First atom is split by a proton beam on a lithium target. Two physicists, Englishman Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Irishman Ernest Walton developed the first nuclear particle accelerator, the Cockcroft-Walton generator. With this equipment, they succeeded in being the first to split the nucleus of an [...]

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Today in History – April 13, 1960 – First U.S. navigational satellite. Transit satellites were used by the US Navy to develop the first operational navigation satellite system The Transit satellites provided an accurate, all-weather navigational aid for ballistic missile submarines and surface vessels and aircraft. The system was designed such that any craft could [...]

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