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This Week in Tech History: Birth of Facebook

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.”

Written by Chris Graveline

Chris has covered consumer technology for over 20 years. He is the host of This Week in Tech History as well as a regular co-host on "Into Tomorrow with Dave Graveline" and our Technical Director.

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