Today in History – 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 [...]

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Today in History – July 31, 2008 – To date, QinetiQ breaks unofficial world record for uninhabited flight over three and a half days US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The record is “unofficial” as QinetiQ conducted the research under a military contract to perform a military utility assessment of a US Government communications [...]

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Today in History – July 30, 1959 – Noyce patents the integrated circuit. Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at the small Fairchild Semiconductor start-up company were both working on the concept of an integrated circuit in 1958. Prior to this invention, only parts of a circuit – such as the transistor – [...]

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Today in History – July 29, 1958 – NASA is established. Before the launch of Sputnik, the United States felt confident in its position on space technology. The modern liquid fueled rocket had been invented in America by Robert Goddard. In addition Wernher von Braun, the developer of the successful German V2 rocket was working [...]

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Today in History – July 27, 2010 – Plastic bottle catamaran named “Plastiki” completes epic pacific crossing. A crew of experts, scientists, and creatives, led by visionary explorer David de Rothschild,  sailed over 12,000 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Sydney in a boat made out of plastic bottles and recycled [...]

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