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This week in 1895 – Scientist Wilhelm Roentgen was experimenting with the effects of an electrical discharge passing through various vacuum tubes, when he accidentally discovered the X-Ray. The first x-ray taken was of his wife’s hand.
1946 – A coin-operated television receiver was displayed in New York City. To sneak a peak at various test patterns and a model of Felix the Cat, folks dropped in a quarter.
1980 – The NASA space probe Voyager I made its closest approach to Saturn and took the first images of its rings.
1993 – Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 was released. The operating system boasted improved support for NetWare and Windows NT, and slipped in numerous architectural changes to improve performance and stability (changes that later found their way into Windows 95).
And this week in 1994 – “The Electronic Engineering Times” ran a cover story about flaws in Intel’s Pentium computer chip. The bug caused extremely rare computation errors when performing certain types of mathematical calculations and eventually caused Intel to replace any Pentium processor affected by the flaw. Intel took a $475 million charge against earnings for the quarter to cover the expense of replacing all of those chips.