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This week in 1851 – Dr. John Gorrie of Apalachicola, FL patented the mechanical refrigerator.
1886 – The first practical phonograph, better known as the gramophone, was patented.
1952 – The world’s first ever jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1 makes its maiden flight, from London to Johannesburg.
1964 – TV sets would be drastically different after a ruling by the FCC stating that all TV receivers should be equipped to receive both VHF channels (2-13) and the new UHF channels (14-83). As a result, TV dealers scrambled to unload their VHF-only models as fast as possible. Antenna manufacturers were kept busy, as the new UHF receivers required new antennas too.
In 1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as “spam”) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1993 – CERN announces World Wide Web protocols will be free.
And this week in 2000 – President Bill Clinton announced that accurate access to the GPS system, developed by the Department of Defense, would no longer be restricted to the United States military – paving the way for our modern GPS navigation devices.