The telephone is patented, the Soviets prep for human spaceflight and the CD makes its debut… It all happened This Week in Tech History.
1876 – Alexander Graham Bell of Salem, MA ‘rang’ up a patent for his invention, the telephone. It was an invention, incidentally, that almost bankrupted his company in the beginning.
1891 – Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patented the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.
1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a dog and a human dummy, and demonstrating that the Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.
1979 – Philips publicly demonstrated the compact disc for the first time. It would be another four years before the compact disc was available for sale here in the US.
1989 – Sir Tim Berners-Lee submitted his proposal to CERN for an information management system which would be developed into the world wide web.