The first X-ray pictures are taken, a milestone is reached in the creation of the Internet and a popular web browser is launched… It all happened This Week in Tech History.
This week in 1895 – Scientist Wilhelm Roentgen took the first X-ray pictures. He had been experimenting with electricity but failed to turn off the machine. The device he was working with overheated and emitted rays. Roentgen came upon the scientific principle that would allow him to take X-ray pictures. Other X-rays had been observed before this; but Roentgen was the only one to prove that his machine worked. He may have been a clever scientist; but he had no business savvy. He never patented his X-ray machine and never received any money for it.
1980 – The NASA space probe Voyager I made its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings. Voyager I was launched in 1977 and still remains operational after more than 43 years – communicating with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth.
1990 – Sir Tim Berners-Lee published a formal proposal for what we now know as the World Wide Web. Before settling on that name, the World Wide Web was very close to being referred to as The Information Mesh.
And this week in 2004 – Firefox 1.0 was released. The Internet browser has had more than 80 versions since then and while very popular, ranks only third on desktops at about an 8% market share, just behind Safari, but very far behind the number one desktop browser, Chrome, which has a nearly 70% market share of desktop browsers.