U.S. Patent Number 5581X was awarded to William Austin Burt on this date in 1829 for his “typographer” (seen above). It was the first device that can be called a typewriter, although that term (with a hyphen) was not in use until the 1860s.

Burt’s invention was large: 12 inches tall by 12 inches wide by 18 inches long, and it did not utilize a keyboard. It worked via a wheel on the front, which one used to dial up the desired letter and line it up where one wanted it, and then one pushed an attached lever to make contact with the paper. (It must have been like composing a text on an old cell phone via a number pad, one letter at a time, except with a giant wooden box.)
Read More

On this date in 1934, federal agents shot and killed a man while he was watching a movie in a theater.

Now, that man was John Dillinger, and he had in fact robbed about a dozen banks and he had escaped prison, but nothing he had done impelled federal attention (he was accused of killing a police officer)—except that he was attracting national attention, “bad guy getting away with it” attention, and was receiving more positive media coverage than J. Edgar Hoover’s Division of Investigation (the precursor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation) and his “G-Men.”

After viewing Manhattan Melodrama in Chicago’s Biograph Theater, Dillinger stepped outside, detected the presence of law officers out to get him, and ran into an alley, where three G-Men pursued him and each one of them fired his weapon.
Read More

“Mission complete, Houston, After serving the world for over 30 years, the shuttle has earned its place in history, and it has come to a final stop.” —Space Shuttle Atlantis Commander Chris Ferguson

After a thirteen-day mission, Space Shuttle orbiter Atlantis glided to a landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida five years ago today. It was the final landing in the three-decade-long Space Shuttle program’s history, and it was a beautiful night landing (photo above).

The four-person crew visited the International Space Station, which had become, after the Columbia re-entry disaster in 2003, the only mission any of the space shuttles were allowed to participate in: a mission to a destination in space where the shuttle could be inspected for launch debris damage.
Read More