On this edition of “This Week in Tech History”, Chris tells us of the start of the most well-known and widely used social network in the world. Also, a Tesla Roadster heads into space.
This week in 1861 – Samuel Goodale of Cincinnati, OH patented the moving picture peep show machine. One put in a coin and turned a crank on the side of the ornately decorated box and voila, a flickering movie appeared! There still are peep shows today, but of an entirely different variety.
1893 – Elisha Gray, of Highland Park, IL, publicly exhibited his machine called the telautograph. This was an analog precursor to what many years later became known as the fax machine.
1997 – NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X and Steve Jobs regaining control of Apple, the company that kicked him to the curb.
2004 – Facebook, the most popular and widely used social media site in the world, was founded by Mark Zuckerberg
And this week in 2018 – SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, a super heavy launch vehicle, made its maiden flight, carrying Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster into space. Blasting out of the car’s speakers, was a loop of David Bowie’s song, “Life on Mars.”